Business financing in Westchester County.
County-by-county financing guides. No paperwork. No social. No ID.
12 institutions are headquartered inside the Westchester County line, Mount Vernon included, and 1 more keep a branch here. Below, we say which is which.
Not this lane? Home FinancingPersonal Financing
The doors in Westchester County.
The CDFIs, credit unions, and microlenders that actually say yes — county by county, in two languages. We are not a lender. Nobody paid to be listed. And where a county has no good doors, we say so.
- 13
- DOORS HERE
- 12
- BASED HERE
- 55
- NY COUNTIES WITH DOORS
- Lane
- Business Financing
- People
- 1.0Mresidents of Westchester County
- Covers
- Mount Vernon
- Elsewhere in NY
- New York County →51 doors — the biggest list of any other county in New York
- State
- New York →55 of 62 counties hold a door in this lane
Certified by the U.S. Treasury to lend where a bank will not. Nonprofit, patient, and used to a file that is not clean.
Community Capital New York, Inc · Leviticus 25:23 Alternative Fund IncOwned by their members, not by shareholders. They look at your whole story rather than a score, and that is the difference when a bank says no.
Quorum Credit Union · Suma Credit Union- Community Capital New York, IncSBA microlenderCommunity lending · Business capital
- Leviticus 25:23 Alternative Fund IncCommunity lending · Business capital
- Quorum Credit UnionPersonal · Home · Business capital
- Suma Credit UnionPersonal · Home · Business capital
- Usalliance Credit UnionPersonal · Home · Business capital
- IN THIS LIST
2 of the 13 doors inside the county line are CDFI-certified.
The U.S. Treasury certifies them to lend to the people banks pass over. It is a loan, not a favour.
- Educational and Governmental Credit UnionPersonal · Home
- Greater Centennial Credit UnionMinority depositoryPersonal
- Mount Vernon Ny Postal Employees Credit UnionMinority depositoryPersonal
Show the other 4Show fewer
- Scf Westchester N. Y. Employees Credit UnionPersonal
- Sing Sing Employees Credit UnionPersonal
- Union Baptist Greenburgh Credit UnionMinority depositoryPersonal
- White Plains P O Employees Credit UnionMinority depositoryPersonal
Based elsewhere, with a member-facing office inside the Westchester County line. You can walk in.
- Municipal Credit UnionMinority depositoryPersonal · Home
- Accion Opportunity FundAccepts ITIN
Nonprofit small-business lender. Accepts ITIN in place of SSN. Serves most states, in English and Spanish.
Business capital - Grameen AmericaAccepts ITIN
Microloans for women entrepreneurs. Requires photo ID and proof of address — no SSN requirement. Branches in major metro areas.
Business capital - Mission Asset FundAccepts ITIN
Zero-interest lending circles and credit building. SSN or ITIN accepted. Works through nonprofit partners across the country.
Personal
How to read this list.
We do not ask for your name, your email, or your number. Nothing on this page changes based on who you are.
A door is headquartered here when its head office sits inside the county line. The rest are based elsewhere and keep a branch you can walk into. We list both, and we label which is which.
Every institution on this page comes from public federal data — the CDFI Fund certified list (Aug 2026), NCUA credit union data (Mar 2026), and the SBA microloan intermediary list (Sep 2026) — plus a short national tier we verified by hand. We refresh each list as its agency publishes. No listing is paid.
Westchester is two economies wearing one name. The money that pays for landscaping, masonry, renovation, cleaning, and home care sits in the estate towns; the people who do that work run their businesses out of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Port Chester, and Peekskill. This guide explains what business financing is and how it works in that split, who qualifies when your customers pay by check and your crew is paid weekly, which documents to gather first, and which institutions genuinely serve this county — including two community development lenders headquartered inside the county line and a dozen credit unions you may already be eligible to join.
It's a process, not a rejection.
Business financing means access to money you use to start, run, or grow a business. It shows up as a term loan repaid on a fixed schedule, a line of credit you draw down and repay as jobs come in, a microloan for smaller amounts when your records are thin, equipment financing secured by the truck or the mower or the oven, invoice financing against work you have already delivered, and occasionally a grant you do not repay.
Westchester's business economy runs on a wealth gradient. The northern and eastern towns generate an enormous, steady demand for skilled property work: landscaping and grounds maintenance, tree work, masonry and stonework, roofing, painting, kitchen and bath renovation, pool and driveway work, house cleaning, elder care, and private child care.
The businesses that supply that demand are overwhelmingly small, family-run, and headquartered in the county's cities.
White Plains adds a professional and office core, the hospital systems add a steady stream of vendor and service contracts, and Port Chester, Yonkers, and Mount Vernon carry dense storefront corridors of restaurants, delis, bakeries, salons, auto repair shops, and grocers.
That shape has a specific financing consequence. A landscaping company with four trucks and eighteen recurring accounts is a real business with real cash flow, but it often has no audited statements, a seasonal revenue curve, and a balance sheet made of vehicles. Commercial banks find that awkward. Community development lenders and credit unions are built for exactly it — and Westchester, unusually, has two community development lenders headquartered inside the county.
Forget what the banks say.
A lender is answering four questions: can you repay, have you repaid before, how long have you been at this, and does the business make sense where it sits.
In Westchester, the applicants who get financed most often look like this:
- Landscaping, grounds, tree, and snow-removal companies with recurring seasonal contracts and a fleet to pledge
- Licensed home-improvement contractors — masons, roofers, electricians, plumbers, tile setters, painters — working the residential renovation market
- Cleaning and building-maintenance companies holding contracts with condo associations, offices, and schools
- Restaurant, deli, bakery, and grocery owners with two or more years of deposits running through one business account
- Auto repair shops and small fleet operators
- Home health, elder care, and licensed child care operators
- Salon and barbershop owners moving from chair rental to their own lease
- Small landlords operating two-to-four-family buildings as a business
The seasonal curve is worth naming. If your revenue collapses in January and peaks in May, you are not a weak borrower — you are a normal one for this county.
What a lender wants is twelve months of statements showing the pattern and a plan for the trough.
Do not hide the slow months; explain them. A line of credit is usually the right product for a seasonal business, and a term loan sized to your peak month is usually the wrong one.
Two honest notes. A thin credit file is the reason community development lenders exist, not a reason to stay home — but money that moves through a personal account, or through no account, cannot be underwritten at all. Open a business account and run everything through it.
And if you file with an ITIN instead of a Social Security Number, three national nonprofit lenders listed below are verified as lending to ITIN holders. For any other institution, ask directly and early — many community development lenders do, and asking costs nothing.
Get your papers in order.
Lenders keep their own checklists, but this set covers most small-business applications in New York. Having it ready turns a month into a week.
- 01Government-issued photo ID
Driver's license, passport, or consular identification
- 02Your ITIN or Social Security Number
- 03
Business certificate filed with the county clerk if you are a sole proprietor or partnership, or your state filing receipt and operating agreement if you are an LLC or corporation
- 04Certificate of Authority for sales tax if you sell taxable goods or certain services
- 05County home-improvement contractor license
And any city license for the municipalities you work in
- 06Certificates of workers' compensation
Disability, and general liability insurance — general contractors and lenders both ask, and public work will not proceed without them
- 07Two years of personal tax returns
Plus business returns if the business has filed
- 08Twelve months of business bank statements if your work is seasonal; three to six months otherwise
- 09Card processing or point-of-sale statements if you take cards
- 10Signed contracts
Recurring service agreements, or a customer list showing who pays you and how often
- 11Simple profit-and-loss statement
A clean one you prepared yourself counts
- 12List of vehicles
Trailers, and equipment, with titles, if you are offering collateral
- 13One page explaining what the money is for and where the repayment comes from
- MISSING ONE?Ask Iris which one you're missing.ASK A QUESTION ↓
The doors worth knowing.
Westchester has a genuinely deep bench, and it should be worked in order. Start with the mission lenders, then the credit unions you are eligible to join, then everything else.
ALL 13 DOORS, BY NAME AND BY TOWN- 13
- DOORS HERE
- 112
- ACROSS NY
Based in Elmsford, New York. A community development financial institution, certified by the U.S. Treasury to lend where a bank will not, and used to a file that is not clean. It lends SBA microloan money.
BEST FORCommunity lending where a bank has already said no, and working capital, equipment and payroll for a small business.Based in Tarrytown, New York. Treasury-certified as a CDFI, which is a mandate rather than a courtesy: reaching borrowers the mainstream market passes over is the job.
BEST FORWorking capital, equipment and payroll for a small business, and community lending where a bank has already said no.Based in Purchase, New York. A credit union: no shareholders to satisfy, and a habit of reading a whole story rather than a single score.
BEST FORWorking capital, equipment and payroll for a small business, and a personal loan, or building a credit file from nothing.Based in Yonkers, New York. A credit union — owned by its members rather than by shareholders, which is exactly what changes the conversation after a bank has said no.
BEST FORA personal loan, or building a credit file from nothing, and buying, repairing or refinancing a home.
Don't fall into these traps.
Small contractors with visible trucks and steady receipts are the most heavily marketed borrowers in the country. Here is what is being sold to you and why to refuse it.
Not loans — purchases of your future receipts at a steep discount, collected by daily or weekly drafts from your account. The cost is deliberately not expressed as an interest rate. For a seasonal business the daily draft is brutal, because it does not slow down in January when your revenue does. If you already have one, ask a community development lender about refinancing before you take a second.
A broker sells you one advance, then another on top, then a third. Each shortens your runway. A real lender asks what else drafts your account and walks away if the answer is bad. A broker asks nothing and gets paid either way.
Some advance contracts are written so the funder can go straight to a judgment against you and your personal accounts. Pay a lawyer for an hour before you sign anything with a number that matters.
Application review, guaranteed approval, credit repair, grant placement. Legitimate lenders take their costs out of the loan proceeds.
A low monthly payment that ends in a large purchase obligation is a common way to sell a truck twice. Ask for the total of all payments plus the end-of-term amount, in writing.
Real grant programs are run by governments and foundations and do not require a paid middleman to find them. Anyone charging a fee to get you a grant is selling you a search you could do for free.
Same-day signing, an offer that expires tonight. No legitimate lender operates that way. Take the documents home, read them in whichever language you read most carefully, and compare at least two offers.
Everything below is set by New York, and it reads the same in every county in it. The 13 marks above are this county's own doors — who opens one is decided by them, not by the state.
The rules where you are.
A few state and county rules decide what a lender expects to see.
Get the name on file first. Sole proprietors and partnerships file a business certificate with the county clerk; LLCs and corporations file with the state. Lenders ask for it, and you cannot open a proper business bank account without it.
Westchester licenses home-improvement contractors at the county level, and several cities add their own requirements on top. If you do residential renovation work here, your license number belongs on your contracts, your estimates, and your advertising — and working without one weakens you badly in any payment dispute. Check with the county's consumer protection office and with each city where you take jobs.
New York requires workers' compensation and disability coverage for employees, and general contractors will not let you on a job without certificates. Budget for insurance before you bid; a lender reading your statements will see whether you actually carry it.
Public and institutional work — school districts, municipalities, hospital systems — generally requires prevailing wage, certified payroll, and sometimes bonding. The back office has to exist before the contract does.
Sales tax on services is not intuitive in New York. Some contracting work is taxable, some is a capital improvement and is not, and the distinction depends on the job and the paperwork the homeowner signs. Get this right early; a sales tax problem discovered three years in is far more expensive than an hour with an accountant now.
The short version.
- 01
If you run a business in Westchester County, you are in one of the better-served counties in the state — but only if you knock on the doors in the right order.
- 02
Start with the two community development lenders headquartered here, in Elmsford and Tarrytown, and ask them plainly what they fund and what their smallest loan is. Then find out which credit union you are eligible to join: four broad-charter credit unions are headquartered in this county, and six more were built around a congregation or a payroll that may include someone in your household. Take the free counseling at the small-business development center network and let them assemble your package before you apply anywhere.
- 03
While you do that, make your business legible. One business account with every dollar through it. Twelve months of statements if your work is seasonal, and an honest explanation of the slow months rather than an attempt to hide them. County contractor license current. Insurance certificates in a folder. Two years of filed returns.
- 04
If you borrow with an ITIN, go to the national nonprofit lenders listed above, which verify borrowers without a Social Security Number, and ask every other institution the question directly.
Same county, another question.
Home FinancingPurchase, renovation, HELOC, and bridge loans for homeowners and investorsSEE IT IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY →
Personal FinancingPersonal loans, credit building, and ITIN-friendly financing optionsSEE IT IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY →55NY COUNTIES WITH DOORSThe whole stateEvery county in New York, in this same lane.112 institutions fund small businesses inside New York county lines.OPEN THE STATE →Still don't see your situation?
Ask Iris. She'll explain it the way it should have been explained the first time.