Finance companies in Dallas: lenders, banks, insurers and investment firms, and how to check one

This report is for Dallas-area borrowers and investors checking a firm, people looking for work in the region's financial sector, and B2B sellers whose customers are lenders, banks, insurers and investment firms.

What "finance company" means, and who licenses each kind

The OCCC says non-depository lenders who make, transact or collect loans at more than 10% interest must hold its license, and most such loans follow the rate structures in Chapter 342 of the Texas Finance Code. If a storefront or online lender won't give you its license number, look it up yourself before signing.

Dallas-Fort Worth finance in Census data

County Business Patterns 2023 covers NAICS 52 (Finance and Insurance) in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metro Area (CBSA 19100).

The same dataset splits the sector:

Two patterns stand out. Insurance carriers average 75 employees per location while agencies average 11: carriers run claims and service centers, agencies are small offices. And the central bank row is the Federal Reserve System: the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which serves the Eleventh District, is headquartered in the city.

Size and location

In broader bands: 11,180 establishments have 1 to 19 employees, 836 have 20 to 99, and 331 have 100 or more. The 90 establishments with 500 or more employees hold at least 69,000 jobs, about a quarter of the total.

Collin County, with Plano and Frisco, is the surprise: 17% of the establishments but 31% of the jobs, at 37.5 employees per location. That's the signature of large operations and service campuses. Dallas County has the most locations and jobs; Tarrant's 3,079 average 16.5 employees.

Headquarters in the region

The Dallas Regional Chamber's 2026 Economic Development Guide maps the region's Fortune 1000 headquarters. Its finance names include Charles Schwab in Westlake (No. 165), Globe Life in McKinney (No. 593), and TPG (No. 715) and FirstCash Holdings (No. 832) in Fort Worth. For a public company's address, its SEC filings are the record; see the report on companies based in Dallas for the full headquarters list.

What the count leaves out

County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees, not companies: a bank with 60 DFW branches counts 60 times, and a solo agent or adviser with no staff isn't counted. A firm's corporate head office may be classified as a management office rather than finance. Most government establishments are excluded. Employment is the week of March 12, 2023.

How to check a Dallas finance company

1. Identify what it is (lender, bank, broker, adviser, insurer) from its own disclosures, then use the matching lookup in the first table.
2. Match the legal name and address on your paperwork to the regulator's record, not to the brand on the website.
3. Read the disciplinary history in BrokerCheck or the SEC adviser search, and complaints where the regulator publishes them.
4. For loans, get the APR and total cost in writing and compare at least two licensed lenders.

Selling to Dallas financial firms

Expect security questionnaires everywhere. Banks run vendor due diligence, and non-bank lenders fall under the FTC's Safeguards Rule (16 CFR 314), which names finance companies, payday lenders, mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers among the institutions it covers. The rule requires a designated Qualified Individual to run the information security program, and an FTC notification within 30 days of discovering a security event involving the information of at least 500 consumers. For finding the right person at each firm, see how to find decision makers.

Illustrative example. The seller, its prices and win rate are invented; the counts are from Census data.

Ridgeline Managed Security (ridgelinesec.example) runs security programs for small non-bank lenders. Its targets are the DFW non-bank lending establishments (NAICS 5222) with 5 to 49 employees: 449 of them, too small for a full-time security officer but squarely inside the Safeguards Rule. Winning 5% (about 22) at $2,000 a month is $528,000 a year. It starts with lenders it can confirm in the OCCC licensee search that have recently opened branches or posted compliance roles. Bebop finds lenders matching a description like that and drafts the first email.

Subject: [company]'s Safeguards Rule program

Hi [first name],

I saw [company] opened [number] new branches in [area] this year. Each new location adds devices and staff to the information security program the FTC's Safeguards Rule requires you to keep.

We act as the Qualified Individual for Texas lenders your size, run the risk assessment and testing, and keep the records an examiner or auditor will ask for.

Would 15 minutes on [day] be useful to compare notes on where your program stands?

[Your name]

Local sources

Next step: see the region's full list of Fortune 1000 headquarters in the report on companies based in Dallas.