01What a UCC-1 filing actually is
When a funder advances money against a business's receivables, it files a UCC-1 financing statement with the secretary of state to register its security interest in the collateral. The filing is public by design. Its purpose is to warn other creditors that someone already has a claim on those assets.
It exists for the benefit of lenders assessing risk. It was never intended as a marketing list, and nothing in it was submitted by a merchant who wanted to hear from you.
Data vendors pull these filings from state registries in bulk, append phone numbers from other sources, and sell the result as MCA leads. That append step is where most of the quality question lives, and it is the step vendors describe least.
02What the data tells you, and what it leaves out
It tells you: this business took secured financing, roughly when, and from whom.
It does not tell you: the current balance, whether the merchant wants more capital, monthly revenue, whether the appended phone reaches the owner or a receptionist — or whether anyone consented to be contacted about anything at all.
That last omission is the one that gets skipped in sales conversations, and it is the one with legal weight. A UCC record carries no consent because there was never a moment at which the merchant gave any. Everything you do with the number afterwards is on you. The consent rules have changed twice in eighteen months, and they matter more here than on any other data source.
03Why UCC lists are the most-dialed data in the market
The filings are public and cheap to collect, which means everyone has them. There is no moat. A merchant who took an advance in March is on a dozen brokers' dialers by April and has been called weekly since.
Owners respond the way anyone would. They screen, they block, they stop answering unknown numbers, and eventually they change the line. Contact rates on aging UCC data are usually the worst of any source in this industry, and a meaningful share of the merchants who do pick up are hostile before you finish your first sentence.
The honest version
Nothing is wrong with the underlying records. The problem is that they are non-exclusive by nature — the state gives them to anyone who asks — so the competition for each merchant's attention is effectively unlimited. Any pitch that presents UCC data as a proprietary advantage is describing something that cannot exist.
04Where UCC data still genuinely works
The value in a UCC record is not the merchant's name. It is the filing date.
Advances run on short terms. A merchant who took funding four to six months ago is often approaching the end of that term, which is the window in which a renewal or refinance conversation is actually welcome rather than intrusive. Filter hard on filing date and you get a small, well-timed list instead of a large, exhausted one.
The second advantage is that these merchants already understand the product. Nobody needs the explanation of how daily or weekly remittance works. There is no sticker shock on factor rates, no long education, and no discovery that the business was never a fit. That shortens a call considerably.
Both advantages come from precision. Five hundred records inside a tight filing window will beat fifty thousand records spanning three years, and cost a fraction as much.
05UCC data against application data
| UCC records | Application data | |
|---|---|---|
| Intent | Inferred from a past transaction | Stated by the merchant, with a date |
| Consent to contact | None | Yes, with a retained record |
| Depth | Business, filer, filing date | Revenue, time in business, amount requested |
| Competition | Effectively unlimited | Set by the buyer cap |
| Best used for | Renewal and refinance timing | Merchants who need money now |
These are complementary rather than competing. A floor running application data for immediate need and a tightly filtered UCC pull for renewal timing is working two different motions, and should measure them separately.
06Buying UCC data without getting burned
- Filter to a narrow filing-date window. This is the whole game. Buy the four-to-six-month band and skip everything older.
- Ask where the phone numbers came from. The registry does not contain them. They were appended from somewhere, and the quality of that somewhere is the quality of your file.
- Accept that consent does not travel with the record. Scrubbing, calling hours, and internal do-not-call handling are entirely your responsibility.
- Expect to pay very little. This data is abundant. Anything approaching application-data pricing is mispriced.
- Dedupe against everything you have ever dialed. UCC lists overlap heavily between vendors, and you will be sold the same merchant more than once.
We don’t sell UCC lists
Our files come from our own funding-request forms, so every row carries a stated request and a dated opt-in. That is a different product with different economics, and it is not better at everything — for renewal timing, a tightly filtered UCC pull does something our data does not. It is widely available and cheap, and you should buy it from someone who specialises in it.
07Common questions
What are UCC leads?
UCC leads are business records built from Uniform Commercial Code financing statements filed with a secretary of state. When a funder advances money against a business's assets it files a UCC-1 to register its security interest, creating a public record that shows the business took secured financing and when.
Are UCC leads any good for MCA?
They work for one specific purpose: timing renewal and refinance conversations with merchants approaching the end of an advance, typically four to six months after the filing date. They are poor for general prospecting because the filings are public, every broker has them, and contact rates on older records are the worst of any source.
Do UCC leads come with consent to call?
No. A UCC filing is a public record created by a lender, not a form submitted by a merchant, so no consent to be contacted attaches to it. Scrubbing against do-not-call registries, observing calling hours, and honouring opt-outs are entirely the buyer's responsibility.
Order a file and test it
Contacts from $0.60, emails from $0.30, full files from $3.50 — published, not quoted. Every row carries its opt-in date. Nothing is charged until we confirm by email.