Commercial lending

In round two of the Paycheck Protection Program, the bank has sent some 256,000 loan applications to the Small Business Administration for processing.

The online lender reported a hefty first-quarter loss on Thursday and said that a whopping 45% of its small-business loans are past due.

It's time for agencies like the Small Business Administration to stop playing catch-up and invest in state-of-the art technology.

The Main Street Lending Program, announced on April 9 as an option to help U.S. businesses weather the coronavirus outbreak, will be available to a wider array of companies than previously planned.

Submissions total about $17.8 billion in requested funding for the second round of the Paycheck Protection Program, with an average loan size of $81,000.

A former economist says high-ranking officials engaged in “legally risky” behavior to downplay consumer harm; online payments and contactless transactions jumped in the first quarter, and some think the new habits will stick.

The lenders are bracing for spikes in delinquencies or defaults on loans to a sector heavily punished by social distancing measures.

The Small Business Administration's last-minute plan to temporarily block larger banks from the relief loan program is another example of the agency changing the rules midstream, critics said.

The Small Business Administration has processed more than 476,000 applications from struggling small-business owners, but lenders say access to the second round of the Paycheck Protection Program has been spotty.

Some bankers, economists, policy experts and even Mark Cuban say that creative uses of overdraft programs could be lifelines for consumers and businesses whose finances have been upended by the coronavirus crisis.

Elected officials are better off deciding who’s most deserving of federally backed coronavirus relief funds for small businesses.

Fintechs in the payments industry saw problems coming when the CARES Act’s SBA Paycheck Protection Program opened the floodgates for millions of coronavirus-stricken small businesses to apply for loans.

Lawmakers should approve a program to distribute stimulus funds using a government-sanctioned coin, which would be speedier than the current system.

The two lenders are being more aggressive than other European banks in putting a price on the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

Portal crashes, technology glitches, last-minute changes in guidance, renewed suspicions about loan dispersal: Meet the new Paycheck Protection Program, same as the old Paycheck Protection Program.

Community banks that have used the Paycheck Protection Program to help businesses ride out the coronavirus outbreak are looking to turn that goodwill into deeper loan and deposit relationships down the road.

Queued-up loans. Extra bankers. Government tweaks to promote fairness. None of these precautionary measures has been enough for the second round of the Paycheck Protection Program to avoid the pitfalls of the first.

As banks accept new applications for the paycheck program, they are dogged by complaints that they prioritized wealthy borrowers. But lenders likely fast-tracked clients they knew best under difficult circumstances, observers say.

The Small Business Administration's systems froze up shortly after the latest Paycheck Protection Program was launched Monday morning.

The billionaire investor and entrepreneur sees problems with small businesses having to apply for loans to get coronavirus relief. He says a more efficient approach would be to let them run negative balances on their bank accounts.