Small business lending

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.

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.

Lenders are being urged to prepare applications for the latest version of the Paycheck Protection Program.

The Tempe Small Business Emergency Loan Program will provide $1 million to help area companies weather the coronavirus.

The industry has always been somewhat reluctant to participate in Small Business Administration lending, but that could change if the agency manages the Paycheck Protection Program well going forward.

The central bank and other agencies have come under pressure to be transparent about their use of funds authorized by the recent pandemic rescue law.

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

A backlog has formed since the first round of Paycheck Protection Program funding dried up, threatening to further strain a platform that struggled to handle the initial workload.

The program, created in response to the 2008 financial crisis, generated $19 billion in small-business loans. It could be used as a viable path out of the coronavirus pandemic.

Small banks are a lifeline for many local businesses and should be given first crack at distributing funds from a continuation of the federal stimulus program.

The SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program is nearly depleted, but there are ways small banks and fintechs, with help from Congress, can remedy the situation.

Lawmakers are considering a plan to reserve Paycheck Protection Program funds for lenders with $50 billion in assets or less, a figure that would include nearly all credit unions.

Bank of America and U.S. Bancorp were also named in a lawsuit filed in Sunday in which the banks are accused of prioritizing large loans distributed through the Paycheck Protection Program in order to maximize fees.