Following a long winter, small business lending continues to thaw. March figures show approval rates are improving—reaching new heights, according to the Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index.

Big banks and institutional lenders lead the way in approvals. Institutional lenders approved the lion’s share of new loans, granting 60.9 percent of small business funding requests last month. March saw a slight increase from February’s approval rate of 60.7 percent. Institutional lenders could be considered the powerhouse of small business lending. The percentage of approvals by these lenders has increased every month since Biz2Credit began monitoring them one year ago.

Biz2Credit CEO Rohit Arora believes the strength of institutional lending is supported by the online platform the company provides. “Institutional lenders are willing to offer attractive loans to small business owners,” Arora said of the March results. “Our Biz2Credit platform enables them to buy small business loans as a solid investment with miniscule risk. Less than 1 percent of loans on our institutional platform have defaulted since January 2014.”