BofA gets nod for $24.9b in small-business loans

Bloomberg

Bank of America Corp. (BofA) received approval for 265,500 small-business loans totaling $24.9 billion in relief funds from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.
Since the program reopened on April 27, the bank has sent 213,000 promissory notes to small businesses informing them that their loans were approved by the SBA, Bank of America said Monday in a statement. The latest tally makes the firm the top lender in the second round of funding, according to the company. The bank also released lending data by state, showing it had funded $3.22 billion of loans in California, $1.38 billion in Florida and $1.03 billion in New York.
“We continue to receive and process new applications,” Dean Athanasia, Bank of America’s head of consumer and small business, said in the statement. “We are happy to see the SBA has been processing submissions at a faster rate, and hopefully there is sufficient funding for everyone in need.”
Of the loan applications submitted, 98% were for companies with fewer than 100 employees, and 93% were for less than $350,000.
The lender pledged to use net proceeds from any PPP fees it receives to support small businesses, communities and non-profits. Apart from PPP program, BofA’s lending to small-business clients rose 11% in the first quarter to $2.4 billion.
The bank deferred more than 1.3 million payments for mortgages, credit cards and auto loans as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also paused home-foreclosure sales.

Big banks pull ahead in US small-business aid
The largest US banks stepped up lending to dominate the US government’s small-business rescue program after playing an undersized role in its early days.
Banks with assets of $10 billion or more processed 68% of Paycheck Protection Program loans last week, data shows, compared with about 40% during the program’s first round from April 3 to April 16. That translates to about $24 billion of PPP loans a day from the largest banks, more than double the daily pace set by that group in the first phase.
The big banks took PPP lending share mostly from medium-sized ones with between $1 billion and $10 billion of assets, the data show. Those firms saw their share drop by more than half to about 16%. The smallest banks’ share also declined, to 15% from about 20%. Figures from the first round were disclosed in an SBA statement. Overall, big banks now account for about half the total lending.
Bank of America Corp. identified itself as top lender in the second round of funding, which means it got loan approvals for $21.3 billion. The bank had won approval for only about $4 billion of loans during the first round of the program.