HL Hunt Adds Business Funding to Its Product Line — With the Usual Caveats on the Numbers

SPONSORED CONTENT — HL Hunt Financial, whose credit-builder and underwriting products this publication has covered previously, has added a business funding line spanning five products: merchant cash advances, invoice factoring, a revolving business line of credit, equipment financing, and preparation packages for SBA and term loans. The company markets it under a single application that it says matches applicants to whichever of those products they qualify for, rather than requiring a separate application per product.

The mechanics of each product are conventional for the space. The merchant cash advance repays through a fixed percentage of daily card sales rather than a fixed installment, so payments scale down on slow days — a structure that trades payment predictability for repayment flexibility, and one whose true cost is expressed as a factor rate rather than an interest rate, which makes it harder to compare directly against an APR-quoted loan. The invoice factoring product advances up to 90% of an outstanding invoice’s value upfront and collects from the customer directly. The line of credit charges interest only on amounts drawn, with the undrawn portion free and available to redraw as the balance is repaid.

HL Hunt markets the funding line on speed and approval rate rather than price: it advertises funding in 24 to 48 hours, a minimum credit score around 500, and an approval rate above 90%, against what it describes as a typical bank approval rate near 25% and a typical online lender rate near 50%. The company’s own comparison table carries a footnote stating the figures reflect "typical industry ranges" rather than an audited benchmark, and that actual terms vary by lender and borrower — a hedge that applies as much to HL Hunt’s own side of the comparison as to its competitors.

That approval-rate gap is the number worth the most scrutiny, and it is also the one HL Hunt has published the least about. A revenue-based underwriting model that looks past a low credit score can genuinely extend funding to businesses a bank would reject outright, which is the entire commercial premise of the merchant cash advance industry. But a materially higher approval rate can also reflect materially higher pricing baked into the factor rate that compensates for the added default risk — the two explanations are not mutually exclusive, and HL Hunt’s public materials do not separate them. The site’s own funding estimator, which lets a visitor model an advance against monthly revenue, is labeled "Estimates only — not an offer of credit," and the illustrative example it defaults to implies a factor rate of roughly 1.20, meaning $75,000 owed against a $62,500 advance — a cost structure a borrower should weigh against a bank line of credit if one is available, not assume is the cheapest option available simply because it is the fastest.

The company’s headline claim of "$250 million-plus funded to businesses" and its "90%-plus approval rate" are, like the credit-builder outcome statistics this publication examined in an earlier spotlight, figures HL Hunt reports about itself rather than numbers verified by a third party or a regulator. That is standard practice across the online small-business lending industry, where audited portfolio performance disclosure is not a regulatory requirement the way it is for public bank call reports, but it is worth stating plainly rather than passing along as fact.

For a business owner weighing the offer, the practical distinction that matters most is the one HL Hunt’s own comparison table draws honestly: this is fast, revenue-based capital with a real underwriting tradeoff against price and structure, not a like-for-like substitute for a bank loan. Whether the specific factor rate or draw terms a given applicant is offered are competitive is a number only visible after underwriting — not something published approval-rate statistics, however favorable, can answer in advance.