Find Me Funders
Does my business funding broker need to be registered or licensed?
In five states, yes, and you can check. In several others they cannot charge you a fee before anything funds.
Drafted with AI assistance. Not yet independently checked. Nobody has verified the claims on this page against a source, so treat the figures and legal points as a starting point rather than as settled, and confirm anything you are about to act on. How we check things.
Does my business funding broker need to be registered or licensed?
Five states put commercial financing brokers on a register or licence as of 2026: Virginia and Connecticut register them alongside providers, Missouri requires registration with the Division of Finance plus a $10,000 surety bond, Texas is phasing in registration with the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner, and California licenses finance brokers under the California Financing Law. Florida, Kansas and Georgia do not register brokers but prohibit advance fees and false representations. Everywhere else, nobody has checked, and registration is never an endorsement of price.
In five states somebody has checked. In the rest, nobody has.
States that register or license brokers
States that regulate conduct instead
Florida prohibits a broker from assessing, collecting or soliciting an advance fee from a business, with a narrow exception for actual application costs such as a credit check or appraisal, paid by check or money order to a party independent of the broker. It also bars false or misleading representations and advertising without an actual address and telephone number.
Kansas mirrors that: no advance fee, no false or misleading representation, no act operating as fraud or deception.
Georgia's 2023 law provides that a broker will not solicit or collect an advance fee, make false representations, or advertise without the required contact details.
Utah does not register brokers but makes the provider disclose any amount paid to a broker in connection with the transaction.
How to check, in about ten minutes
A registration you cannot verify is a claim, not a registration.
If a broker will not give you the legal entity name and the registration number in writing, you have the answer without making a call.
What the broker is paid, and where it comes from
If the points come out of the wire, $90,000 reaches your account and you still deliver $130,000. That is $40,000 of cost on $90,000 of cash — 44.4% of what you received, not the 30% the factor implies. The effective factor on the money that arrived is 1.4444.
If the points are added to the purchased amount instead, you receive $100,000 and deliver $143,000 — 43% of cash. Both routes cost about the same, and neither appears anywhere in the factor you were quoted.
Underneath this sits the buy rate. A funder quotes a broker the rate it will accept; the broker may sell above it and keep the spread. That is a legitimate way to be paid, and it is only a problem when it is invisible. Ask what the funder's rate is and what was added. The answer is either a number or a deflection.
Five questions to ask
- Are you the funder, or arranging this with a funder?
- Are you registered or licensed in my state for this, and under what number?
- How are you paid on this deal, by whom, and how much?
- Does any part of your fee come out of my funding proceeds?
- Are you asking me to pay anything before funds are disbursed?
Verify the answer to question two with the agency, not with the broker. Question five has legal teeth in Florida, Kansas and Georgia.
What to do about an advance fee request
In Florida, Kansas and Georgia the prohibition on advance fees has statutory force, subject to narrow exceptions for genuine third-party costs such as a credit check or appraisal. Elsewhere it is not unlawful, but the economics are identical: a fee paid before funding is a fee paid for something that has not happened.
- Do not pay an application, processing, due diligence or lender commitment fee from your own funds before disbursement. Genuine costs are normally netted from the funding.
- Where a third-party cost genuinely has to be paid up front, pay the third party directly rather than the broker, and keep the invoice.
- Keep the emails. In an advance-fee state they are the evidence; everywhere else they are still what a regulator complaint or a claim would rest on.
What registration is not
It is not approval of the deal, a test of competence, or any comment on price. No state on this list reviews what a funder charges. What a register gives you is identity, accountability and a complaint channel — which is more than a caller ID.
This is general information and not legal advice for your situation.
Where this applies
Related questions
Does my business funding broker need to be registered or licensed?
Five states put commercial financing brokers on a register or licence as of 2026: Virginia and Connecticut register them alongside providers, Missouri requires registration with the Division of Finance plus a $10,000 surety bond, Texas is phasing in registration with the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner, and California licenses finance brokers under the California Financing Law. Florida, Kansas and Georgia do not register brokers but prohibit advance fees and false representations. Everywhere else, nobody has checked, and registration is never an endorsement of price.
Which funding products does this apply to?
Merchant Cash Advance, Working Capital, Term Loan, Business Line of Credit, Revenue-Based Financing. Each has its own page listing the funders in this directory that offer it and what each one publishes about its terms.
Does this apply in California?
This piece is written about California specifically. Rules on disclosure, broker registration and lender licensing are set at state level and change, so confirm the current position with the state agency named on the California page before relying on it.
Who writes this?
The Find Me Funders research desk. Some drafting is AI-assisted, and every page that is says so at the top, including whether a person has checked its claims yet.
How do I know a figure here is right?
Where a page carries the green notice, its claims were checked against the sources listed at the end and a reviewer is named. Where it carries the amber one, nobody has verified it yet and you should confirm anything you plan to act on.
Are the examples real deals?
No. Every worked example is labelled illustrative and exists to show the arithmetic. What any particular lender charges is on that lender's page, where it publishes it.
Why do you never say what a typical rate is?
Because we cannot source it. A market average assembled from lenders who do not publish prices is a guess with a decimal point on it. Where a lender publishes a figure, we show that figure and say where it came from.
Is this financial or legal advice?
No. It is general information about how these products work. Outcomes depend on your contract and your state, and a lawyer or accountant licensed where you are is the person to ask about your situation.
Can I reuse this content?
Quote a paragraph with a link back. Do not republish whole articles.