Retail & Commercial

Closed showrooms, temporary bans on repossessions and a sudden spike in unemployment have dimmed the prospects of a sector that has boomed since the last recession.

The agency overhauled its system for the Paycheck Protection Program on Wednesday. Lenders hope it addresses the access issues and a crash that bedeviled the effort’s first week.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Treasury secretary that the Financial Stability Oversight Council should create a liquidity facility to deal with a flood of forbearance requests brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

Community advocates would like to see changes to the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, but say regulators should suspend such efforts until the coronavirus pandemic has passed.

Pinnacle Bankshares and Virginia Bank Bankshares said the move will let each bank focus more on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Federal Reserve is temporarily altering the growth restriction it placed on Wells Fargo in 2018 so that the bank can make additional loans to small and midsize business that need funding to weather the coronavirus pandemic.

The lending facility is for companies with more than 500 employees that are disqualified from the relief program for small businesses and too small for federal loans reserved for larger companies.

Spirit of Texas Bancshares named an interim CEO for Dean Bass, though the company said he is recovering.

Lawmakers want to expand the two-day old small business loan program by another $250 billion; Calabria says nonbanks are exaggerating their financial woes as forbearance claims rise.

OakNorth helps banks analyze credit, identify pandemic-related risks and forecast borrower issues before they turn into defaults.