- At 30 June 2026, 165 business development companies held $371.7bn of term loans to 7,316 borrowers. The median position was $4m.
- The median loan paid 500 basis points over its base rate. One in ten paid 350bp or less and one in ten 650bp or more. The median all-in rate was 8.73%.
- Borrowers with a single BDC lender paid a median of 525bp. Borrowers with seven or more paid 475bp. Those 415 widely held borrowers account for about $135bn, more than a third of the book.
- At the 156 BDCs reporting in both quarters, loans carrying a payment-in-kind rate rose from 9.91% to 10.32% of principal. A fifth of the borrowers owing more than $500m have one.
- Of the principal with a reported maturity, $31bn falls due before the end of 2028. The peak years are 2031 and 2032.
- The ten largest BDCs hold 46.5% of all BDC term loan principal.
1. Why these books matter
Most private credit is invisible. A fund lends to a company owned by a private equity firm, and the terms appear nowhere but in the loan agreement and the fund's reports to its own investors. Even the existence of the loan may be public only as a registered charge or a line in a press release.
Business development companies are the exception. A BDC is a closed-end investment company, listed or privately offered, that lends to and invests in US businesses under a special regime of the Investment Company Act.2 It must report its whole portfolio to the SEC every quarter. For each loan it gives the borrower, the rate, the margin, the maturity and the amount, with what the loan cost and what the BDC says it is now worth. The SEC publishes those schedules as structured data.1
BDCs are not the whole market. The same managers run private funds, separately managed accounts and insurance mandates that lend alongside them and report nothing. But the BDCs lend on the same deals, at the same terms, and they are large. Their filings are the best public sample of private credit there is.
We took every debt position reported for the quarters to 31 March and 30 June 2026. We left out revolving facilities and a handful of positions with impossible reported amounts. That leaves 31,676 positions at 30 June, held by 165 BDCs, with $371.7bn of principal.
2. The price
Private credit loans almost all float: a base rate, now SOFR in US dollars, plus a margin fixed at the start.3 The margin is the lender's price for the borrower's risk.
The median margin at 30 June 2026 was 500 basis points. The distribution is tight in the middle and long at the ends. Some 11,000 loans sat at 450, 475 or 500bp. One in ten paid 350bp or less, and one in ten 650bp or more.
The median all-in rate, base plus margin, was 8.73%. That is about where the cost of senior private debt for a mid-sized US company sits today. In the UK and Europe the base rates differ, but in our reading of individual deals the margins are comparable. A UK dental group's facility in 2023 carried 750bp over a compounded reference rate. A UK fire engineering group's 2024 refinancing carried 550 to 625bp over SONIA.
The middle of the distribution is crowded for a reason. A margin of 450 to 525bp is what a sponsor-owned company with steady earnings and moderate leverage pays when several lenders want its loan. Below that range sit the largest borrowers, where banks and the syndicated loan market compete. Above it sit smaller and riskier borrowers, specialist sectors, and loans repriced after something went wrong.
3. Competition
The clearest pattern in the books is what happens to the price when lenders compete.
We matched borrowers across BDCs by name and counted how many BDCs lend to each one. A borrower with one BDC lender paid a median of 525bp. Two or three lenders, 500bp. Four to six, 475bp. Seven or more, 475bp.
Part of that is size: a larger loan needs more lenders, and larger borrowers are usually stronger credits. But the pattern holds within size bands too. A borrower that can bring several lenders to the table can make them bid against each other.
A borrower that can bring seven lenders to the table pays half a point less than one that can bring one.
The money is concentrated in the widely held loans. The 415 borrowers with seven or more BDC lenders account for about $135bn of principal, more than a third of the book. The 3,179 borrowers with a single BDC lender account for about $61bn. Private credit is two markets in one: a competitive club market for larger sponsored companies, and a long tail of bilateral loans to smaller ones.
4. Size
Group the borrowers by how much they owe BDCs in total and the two markets appear side by side.
| Owes BDCs | Borrowers | Median margin | Average BDC lenders | Share with a PIK loan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $10m | 2,116 | 500bp | 1.3 | 7.9% |
| $10m to $25m | 1,642 | 525bp | 1.7 | 9.7% |
| $25m to $100m | 2,039 | 500bp | 2.7 | 11.8% |
| $100m to $500m | 623 | 500bp | 6.0 | 16.1% |
| Over $500m | 79 | 475bp | 13.6 | 20.3% |
Borrowers owing less than $10m have, on average, 1.3 BDC lenders. Those owing more than $500m have 13.6. The median margin barely changes across the bands, from 500bp at the small end to 475bp at the top, with a bump to 525bp for borrowers of $10m to $25m. That bump is where a company is too big for its bank and too small to attract a club. It borrows from one fund, and pays for the privilege.
What changes much more with size is the use of payment in kind.
5. Interest paid in kind
A loan with a PIK rate lets the borrower pay part of its interest by adding it to the principal. Some loans are written that way from the start. Others gain the option later, often in exchange for a covenant waiver.
At the 156 BDCs that reported in both quarters, loans with a PIK rate made up 9.91% of term loan principal at 31 March 2026 and 10.32% at 30 June. The median PIK component was 3.75 percentage points.
The surprise is where it sits. Among borrowers owing less than $10m, 7.9% have a PIK loan. Among those owing more than $500m, 20.3% do. Large, sponsor-owned companies are the heaviest users. That is partly because their lenders compete hard and will concede flexibility to keep a loan, and partly because a large borrower in difficulty is more often given time than restructured. A rise of 0.4 points in a quarter is small. It is also the direction a lender would least like to see.
6. The maturity wall
Private credit loans mostly repay at the end. The maturity date is therefore when the borrower must refinance, repay from a sale, or negotiate.
Of the principal for which the BDCs report a maturity, $2.8bn falls due in the second half of 2026, $9.5bn in 2027 and $18.7bn in 2028. The amounts rise each year to $35.6bn in 2031 and $33.6bn in 2032.
The shape reflects when the loans were written. Five- to seven-year loans from the boom of 2021 and 2022 fall due in 2027 to 2029. Loans written or extended since then fall due in the early 2030s. The near-term wall is modest. The refinancing pressure will build through 2028 and 2029, when 1,663 borrowers in this sample must refinance $42.7bn between them.
A borrower whose loan matures in eighteen months is already in conversation with its lenders, whether or not it has told anyone. The borrowers who start those conversations early, with a clear story about what has changed since the loan was written, refinance on better terms.
7. Who lends
The BDC market is more concentrated than its reputation for many competing lenders suggests. The ten largest BDCs hold 46.5% of all BDC term loan principal.
The largest, Blue Owl Credit Income, held $33.8bn across 328 borrowers. Apollo Debt Solutions held $28.3bn, Goldman Sachs Private Credit $22.5bn, and Ares Capital $21.8bn across 460 borrowers. Several managers appear more than once, with separate vehicles for different investors. Four of the five largest are non-traded BDCs, sold to wealthy individuals through wealth managers rather than listed on an exchange.
The concentration matters for borrowers. A handful of managers sees a large share of the deals, sets much of the market's sense of price, and appears again and again in the same clubs. A borrower negotiating with one of them is negotiating with someone who knows the terms of hundreds of comparable loans.
8. What it means
For a company borrowing privately, four things follow from the books.
The going rate is about 500bp over the base rate. A senior loan to a steady, sponsor-owned company sits between 450 and 525bp. A quote well outside that range needs an explanation.
Competition is worth about half a point. A borrower that can run a process with several lenders pays less than one that goes to a single fund. The difference compounds over the life of the loan.
The terms matter as much as the margin. Payment in kind, call protection and covenants decide what a loan costs and how much room the borrower has. A tenth of the book now pays in kind.
Refinancing starts early. The wall is gentle in 2026 and 2027 and steep after. The borrowers who refinance well will be the ones who start before they have to.
Method. Source: the SEC's BDC data sets for the quarters to 31 March and 30 June 2026, which give each BDC's schedule of investments as structured data. Debt positions only; revolving facilities are excluded, as are positions reporting principal of $3bn or more (one position was reported at $194.8bn, a unit error). Margins and rates are as reported for each position; the distribution chart groups margins to the nearest 25bp between 200 and 1,300bp. Borrowers are matched across BDCs by a normalised name, so a borrower whose name is written differently by two BDCs counts twice. "Lenders" is the number of BDCs holding the same borrower's debt; it does not count lenders outside the BDC sample. The same-store PIK comparison uses the 156 BDCs that reported in both quarters. Maturities cover positions with a reported maturity date between July 2026 and 2034, about $162bn of principal. Floors are reported for too few positions to be summarised reliably and are not shown.
“A borrower that can bring seven lenders to the table pays half a point less than one that can bring one.”
Sources
- Business Development Company data sets, US Securities and Exchange Commission, quarters to 31 March and 30 June 2026
- Business Development Companies (investor bulletin), US Securities and Exchange Commission
- Secured Overnight Financing Rate data, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Cite as: “The visible book”, Norvian Review, 8 October 2026.