Small business owners around the country are scratching their heads amidst their broader panic about the news that the Paycheck Protection Program funding has run out. According to COVID Loan Tracker, which has tracked the applications of 15,000 small businesses totaling over $5 bn in PPP loans, only around 6% of companies have actually had loans deposited in their accounts. Many small businesses are wondering “where is the money?”, says COVID Loan Tracker co-founder Rita MacDonald-Korth.
PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE SURVEY
COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand when PPP and EIDL advance money starts flowing. The site works by crowdsourcing knowledge on applications and loan disbursements. Our goal is to help the small business community and empower journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.
The two founders of the site report that they have had extensive communication with banks and lenders over the last ten days and the huge difference between “approved” loans and disbursed loans can be accounted for by the behavior of borrowers, the banks, and the SBA.
“The speed with which the PPP program was designed led to inherent flaws and misaligned interests that have caused huge bottlenecks in deploying funds to small businesses”, says Duncan MacDonald-Korth. According to MacDonald-Korth, the problem is that the poor initial guidelines for banks and the “first come first serve” nature of the program, made borrowers apply to many banks/lenders at once. Because of that “there was double to triple the volume of applications as actual businesses applying”. This caused an apparent cascade of issues.
Firstly, it compelled banks to submit applications to the SBA for approval before they were actually complete. Because banks get paid a 1-5% fee for processing the loan, they want to make sure they process it and not a competitor. Accordingly, with so many duplicate applications, it made sense for the banks to urgently submit applications to the SBA—in order to win approval versus other lenders—even if all the paperwork was not in order. The SBA, in turn, had to make sure it was not approving duplicate applications, so it had double check each application flowing in, slowing down the process. All of this leads to the situation we have today—money entirely exhausted, but the vast majority of it not paid out because banks are still getting the proper paperwork from borrowers.