The Late Arrivals

A UCC-1 tells you a lender claimed an interest in a borrower's assets. When it was filed, compared with everyone else's filings on the same borrower, tells you something more. Lenders that file at closing usually appear early in a borrower's history. A filing that arrives after other lenders were already on record may be a later loan, a refinance, or, for some funders, a filing made only when a deal starts to go wrong. The data cannot say which. It can say how often each kind of lender shows up late.

How we measured it

We looked at 614,780 UCC-1 filings dated January 1 – September 26, 2026, grouped by borrower name and state. A filing counts as a late arrival when the same borrower already had an earlier filing from a different lender. Name variants of one lender are combined, so a lender is never counted as arriving after itself.

MCA and private funders arrive late most often

15.8% of MCA and private-funder filings were late arrivals, against 6.6% for captive equipment lenders and 4.5% for banks. Some overlap is normal: a borrower can legitimately have an equipment lender and a working-capital funder at the same time. But the gap between lender types is large and consistent.

A long tail of occasional filers

MCA and private funders are mostly small filers. 630 of 818 filed five or fewer UCC-1s this year, and only 18 filed 100 or more. Among banks, 3,478 of 5,664 filed five or fewer, and 227 filed 100 or more. A lender that files rarely may simply lend rarely, so filing volume alone does not show when it files. Timing relative to other lenders is the more useful signal.

What this does not show

• Not a default count. Filings do not show defaults, loan amounts or origination dates. A late arrival is consistent with reactive filing, but it is not proof of it.
• Not a judgment on any lender. We report patterns by lender type and name no individual funders.
• Not a failure predictor. Filing volume cannot show whether a lender is healthy or about to close.

What it means

• Credit and underwriting teams: check the order of filings on a borrower. Under the UCC's general first-to-file rules, earlier filers often hold priority, so a late arrival may sit in a junior position. This is not legal advice.
• Lenders and brokers: borrowers with several lenders, including late arrivals, are worth a closer look before new capital goes in.
• Collections and recovery teams: a borrower whose filing history shows late arrivals may already have competing claims on the same assets.