Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 5/5 debate potential 4/5

Loeffler: SBA has eliminated DEI criteria from loan underwriting guidelines

Kelly Loeffler · Winning the AI Race Part 1: Michael Kratsios, Kelly Loeffler, Shyam Sankar, Chris Power · Jul 23, 2025 · at 1:25:40

Kelly Loeffler, Administrator of the Small Business Administration, discusses changes to SBA loan evaluation criteria at the All-In Hill & Valley Forum.

0:00 / 0:03exact quote · 3.6s

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“We've stripped out the DEI that the last administration had put in.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

The Small Business Administration under Administrator Kelly Loeffler removed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) criteria introduced by the Biden administration from its loan underwriting guidelines.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The SBA under Administrator Loeffler modified loan underwriting guidelines to roll back Biden-era policies—such as the 'Do What You Do' standard, lowered credit score prescreen thresholds, and the expanded Community Advantage pilot program—which the Loeffler-led SBA officially categorized and targeted as DEI-driven rules. However, independent policy analysis indicates that the Biden administration's underwriting guidelines consisted of adjusted risk tolerance metrics, lower credit thresholds, and expanded lender discretion aimed at broadening capital access, rather than explicit, mandatory DEI scoring criteria in individual loan evaluations.

In April 2025, the SBA officially eliminated the Biden-era 'Do What You Do' standard, raised minimum prescreen credit scores, and lowered streamlined underwriting limits.
In June 2025 testimony before the House Small Business Committee, Administrator Loeffler stated the SBA was removing DEI rules from underwriting standards.
Independent policy reporting (including Brookings Institution analysis) notes that Biden-era underwriting guidelines altered credit/risk parameters rather than introducing explicit race-based or mandatory DEI scoring criteria.

Checked against

[1] sba.gov [2] sba.gov [3] sba.gov [4] sba.gov [5] brookings.edu [6] americanbanker.com [7] rev.com [8] house.gov

"DEI" "loan underwriting" "SBA" OR "Small Business Administration" Small Business Administration loan guidelines DEI Kelly Loeffler Federal Register Kelly Loeffler SBA Administrator DEI loan guidelines "Kelly Loeffler" "DEI" "underwriting" "underwriting guidelines" "DEI" "Loeffler" OR "SBA" "diversity, equity, and inclusion" "underwriting" SBA "Loeffler" Kelly Loeffler Small Business Administration DEI loan underwriting guidelines

assessed as of 2026-07-30

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

DEI Small Business Administration

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Loeffler: SBA has eliminated DEI criteria from loan underwriting guidelines

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