Displaying items by tag: covid loan tracker

It is now official, the Paycheck Protection Program has exhausted its entire $349 bn. The announcement came yesterday that all the money in the program has been “approved”. However, that announcement left small business owners in confusion, as data shows very little money has arrived. According to COVID Loan Tracker, less than 6% of small business owners say that they have actually received money.

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.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

Small business owners are having trouble reconciling the difference they see between the SBA’s numbers and the lack of money they see in their accounts. The SBA has done little to clear up the confusion, as they have not made actual loan disbursement data public. “Where is the money? That is what all small business owners are asking us. We are getting thousands of those emails a day.”, says Rita MacDonald-Korth, co-founder of COVID Loan Tracker.

HELP COVID LOAN TRACKER KEEP THE DATA FLOWING

Earlier this week, the Small Business Administration released aggregate details about the amount of loans “approved” in each sector and each state for the Paycheck Protection Program. However, the document did very little to help business owners understand where their money is, says COVID Loan Tracker.

“Approved” has become a very vague term as it concerns the SBA. COVID Loan Tracker says it has received hundreds of emails from small business owners who say that they have received notices of “approval” but have then waited several days before receiving money, or still have not received it.

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.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

While the release of the data by the SBA does help gain insight into which sectors and states will ultimately receive money, the agency has been reticent to release the numbers of actual loan disbursement (i.e. money actually paid out). This figure would be much more illustrative of how the PPP loan program is proceeding.

For instance, the document does not lend any clarity to the percent of applications that have been paid. According to COVID Loan Tracker, that figure stands at just 5%, a far cry from the ~70% the SBA says has been “approved”. “Where is the money”, says one of COVID Loan Tracker’s founders, Duncan MacDonald-Korth.

https://www.covidloantracker.com/

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.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

Today the site is announcing an exciting new development—all stats will be available in real-time! Data on successful PPP loans and EIDL advances, as well as on all applications, will be live and in real-time on COVID Loan Tracker. This mean small business owners and the press can get live and updated information 24 hours per day.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Additionally, the new automated reporting will feature data visualization tools which help to understand how and where money is flowing, such as heat mapping states where the most money is flowing.

According to COVID Loan Tracker, big banks are not doing a good job getting money moving to those who have applied for PPP loans. In their latest update yesterday afternoon, with around 8,000 companies reporting around $3.5 bn of loans from all 50 states, the large majority are getting approved through small and regional banks. In fact, JP Morgan Chase seems to be the only bank getting any applications approved, as Wells Fargo and Bank of America are showing very few approvals on COVID Loan Tracker, with Citi showing none.

PLEASE HELP US HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

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.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Small and regional banks have been leading the charge in approvals all over the country. This is reportedly because many small and regional banks were already set up to process SBA loans as part of their normal course of business before the COVID-19 outbreak. This means they were already familiar and connected to the E-Tran system being used to process the loans by the SBA.

Please help us keep the data flowing!

We could not be more excited today, as Mark Cuban has featured COVID Loan Tracker and shared with his LinkedIn following.

COVID Loan Tracker was founded in Miami by husband and wife team Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth in order to help small business owners track when PPP loan money starts flowing and empower journalists with the data they need to hold the government accountable.

The site’s traffic jumped by 50x yesterday versus Friday and COVID Loan Tracker received an additional 4,000 survey submissions from small businesses yesterday. In total, CLT is now tracking 7,000 PPP loan applications amounting to about $3 bn in applications.

Thus far only about 4% of companies reporting have successfully received PPP Loans.

PLEASE FOLLOW MARK’S LEAD AND SHARE COVID LOAN TRACKER