Finance and technology expert Tom Groenfeldt recently wrote an article about SmartBiz Loans published by Forbes: SmartBiz Loans Uses Tech And People To Expedite SBA Loan Applications.
The piece outlines how SmartBiz Loans is fulfilling its mission to make SBA loans easy and help business owners get the low-cost funding they deserve through our bank partners. In fact, we have outpaced a number of national banks, including JP Morgan Chase, to become the top facilitator of SBA 7(a) loans $350,000 and less for the 2017 calendar year. Also in 2017, SmartBiz Loans, through its bank partners, surpassed half a billion dollars in funded SBA loans.
In a quote, SmartBiz Loans CEO Evan Singer mentioned the difficulty borrowers face when applying for an SBA loan through a bank. Singer has clarified his statements in a letter posted on LinkedIn here. The letter is posted in its entirety below.
15,000 Jobs
To make a clarification that might not have come through in the article, the SBA is an incredibly prudent organization. In order to protect American taxpayers and ensure lenders do not abuse its guarantee, the SBA requires that its lenders (mostly banks) apply the same underwriting criteria, steps, processes, screens, filters, and checks that a bank would apply to a non-SBA loan. SmartBiz Loans’ technology helps banks accelerate and automate these processes to ensure that no steps are skipped or accidentally neglected, while completing the process faster. When asked about the lengthy and challenging parts of the SBA borrowing process in the article, it was all these steps that banks must take that I referred to.
The SBA itself has made great strides at automating much of its own back-end and bank interfaces, but the extent to which borrowers can benefit from this depends on banks becoming more streamlined.
We remain impressed at how the SBA continues to innovate under the current administration, while remaining focused on its mission in supporting small business. For example, several changes to the SBA’s Standard Operating Procedures in the past year have removed barriers and increased efficiency in Small Loan processing. In the case of SmartBiz, because of the SBA’s support, of our partner banks sub $350,000 SBA 7(a) loans: 30% have been made to women-owned businesses, 25% to minority-owned businesses, 10% to rural businesses, and 5% to veteran-owned businesses – all creating or retaining over 15,000 jobs since the beginning of 2017.
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