Commercial Finance Registration Database — 761 Registrations, Four States, One Search
49 minutes ago
3 min read
For the past four years, this industry has watched state governments build a patchwork of registration and licensing requirements for commercial finance, and watched the lists of who actually complied get scattered across licensee-search tools, buried Excel files, and records that some states don't publish at all. We decided to fix that.
The Commercial Finance Registration Database is live for Funder Intel members, and it just got its biggest update yet: Utah's full roster is in. That brings the database to 761 registrations across four states, Virginia (185 registrants), Connecticut (181), Missouri (75 broker registrations), and Utah (320), every one of them pulled from official state records, searchable in one place by company name, d/b/a, registration ID, and headquarters.
Why this exists
If you fund deals, broker deals, or sell to the companies that do, you already live with the question this tool answers: is this company registered where it says it operates?
Answering it the old way means knowing that Virginia's list sits behind a licensee-search tool, Connecticut's is an Excel file three clicks deep on the Department of Banking's site, Utah's exists only inside NMLS one name at a time, and Missouri's took a public records request to obtain at all, which is exactly how we got it. The Utah roster came the same way, through a records request to the Department of Financial Institutions, because no public list existed. That's the point of the database: we did the digging once so members never have to.
Search a funder before you send them a file. Check a broker before you co-broker. If you're newer to the industry, browse any state's roster and you're looking at a map of who the players actually are: the national names, the regional shops, and the 52 companies headquartered in Utah alone that most of the industry has never heard of. Companies on these lists have put their name, their fee, and in some states a bond behind operating above board. That's worth knowing before money moves.
What members get
Each state module shows the full current roster with official registration IDs, SCC numbers in Virginia, NMLS IDs in Utah and Connecticut, Missouri's CBR license numbers, plus every d/b/a and trade name, headquarters filters, and a map of where registrants are actually based. (New York and Florida dominate; the states doing the regulating are mostly importing their funders.) The cross-state search is the feature we use most ourselves: type a company once and see every state where it holds a registration, and every state where it doesn't.
The data carries its as-of date on every list, and we refresh monthly with the changes reported in The Funding Curve: new registrants, drop-offs, renames. September proved why that matters: 55 companies fell off Virginia's roster in a single renewal cycle when annual fees came due. A list like this is only as good as its last update, so updating it is the job.
The clock that makes this urgent: Texas
Texas registration under HB 700 is due by December 31, 2026, just over two months out, for providers and brokers of sales-based financing, with annual renewals each January 31 after that. As the OCCC's registrations are published, Texas becomes the database's fifth live state, and we'll be watching who's on that first list the way we watched Virginia's.
And the patchwork keeps growing behind it. Vermont's licensing law takes effect in July 2027. California's AB 2116, signed in September, requires DFPI licensing across commercial financing, MCA, and factoring included, by July 2028. Registration was the first wave; licensing is the second. Both will run through this database as the rosters exist. For the statute-by-statute picture of every state law, what's covered, who's exempt, every effective date, our Commercial Financing Regulation Tracker is the companion tool: the Tracker covers the rules, the Database covers the names.
The database is included with Funder Intel membership, along with the monthly change reports. If you're already a member, it's waiting for you. If you're not, this is the kind of resource the membership exists for.
All data compiled from official state regulator records; informational only, not legal advice. Verify current status with the relevant regulator before relying on it.
