Score Local Economies Before They Turn.
Net formation and dissolution signals from state SOS filings — refreshed nightly, the moment a market turns, with NAICS breakdowns and neighborhood heat maps. Not census tract data from three years ago that measures applications, not closures.
Coverage
IL & CA in the expansion sequence
Illustrative — live values populate from biz_market_signals as the nightly SOS crawl completes its baseline pass.
The Problem
Small-business lending runs on stale signals:
- Census tract demographic data is years stale by the time you underwrite a loan book
- You can't see a county's formation pulse until it surfaces in published indicators — quarters later, and measured as applications, not closures
- When formations slow or closures accelerate in your service area, you find out from the loan-loss curve
- Concentration risk in NAICS sectors hides behind aggregate small-business indices that don't update monthly
What You Can Do
Score Local-Economy Health Monthly
Pull net formation rate — formations − dissolutions per 1,000 active businesses — by county and NAICS sector to see where your service area is expanding or contracting. The signal arrives the moment SOS filings post, refreshed nightly — not last decade's annual census tract data.
Track NAICS Concentration Risk
Drill any county aggregate down to a 2-digit NAICS code. If 38% of new formations in your service area are in NAICS 72 (Accommodation + Food) and the closure rate in that sector is climbing, your loan book is exposed — and you can see it before charge-offs spike.
Map Formation Density Against Your Loan Pipeline
Neighborhood-level heat maps surface where new businesses are forming. Pair them against your existing loan portfolio to prospect originations, find CDFI investment-area opportunities, or spot service-area whitespace.
Build Formation-Trend Reports for the Board
Export the trailing-twelve formation + closure trend by service area for board memos, CRA reporting, and community-impact narratives. The CSV export feeds straight into your reporting workflow.
Sample Insight
The prospecting play and the defensive play, side by side — the same nightly pulse that finds where to lend also flags where a market has already turned. Both reads are illustrative.
+1,124 formations · −487 closures · net +637 (formation rate 11.2 / 1K, closure rate 4.9 / 1K)
Net formation rate in Polk County construction is +6.3 per 1K businesses on the trailing twelve, holding steady against the state aggregate. New construction LLCs are concentrated in three ZIP codes — visible on the neighborhood heat map.
Action:open a prospecting list of the 1,124 new construction entities, filter to formations > 90 days old (past the early-stage failure cliff), and route the survivors to the business-banking relationship team.
Illustrative only. Production volumes scale with your service-area footprint and Lender-tier rate limit (1,000 req/mo).
+612 formations · −893 closures · net −281 (formation rate 5.1 / 1K, closure rate 7.4 / 1K)
Net formation in Miami-Dade accommodation + food turned negative this quarter — closures now outrun formations at −2.3 per 1K. A lender pulling the latest published county indicator still sees this market growing; the inflection won't reach that source for another two quarters.
Action: review new originations in this sector for the service area, re-underwrite existing exposure against the closure trend, and flag the concentration to the credit committee before charge-offs confirm it.
Illustrative only. The turn shown here is the kind a nightly SOS pulse surfaces ahead of published aggregates.
Recommended Plan
The Lender plan is sized for community lenders — national coverage, NAICS breakdown, neighborhood heat maps, API access.
- Everything in Analyst
- National coverage (as states are added)
- Business license filing data (where available)
- NAICS 2-digit industry breakdown
- Neighborhood-level formation heat maps
- Full historical lookback
- API access (1,000 req/mo)
- 10,000 row CSV/JSON export per month
- Email + chat support
- 7-day free trial, cancel anytime
Need survival rate, early-closure signals, or webhook alerts? Compare all plans