Community Banks to Seek More U.S. Help in Small Business Program

A community bank trade group will send a letter to the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration asking for more access to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). 

The Independent Community of Bankers of American worries that many of its own members have been excluded from the stimulus loan efforts, according to Bloomberg. The group will also ask the Federal Reserve to create a program to backstop the small business loans and provide advances against loans from small banks. 

Many community banks haven’t received authorization numbers and have been locked out of participating in the PPP — almost a third of community banks have been unable to access the system since it launched. The group will also request a user manual for the PPP platform and ask the SBA and the Treasury to allocate at least 25% of current and future business lending funds to small banks. Small banks hold almost 27% of industry assets and employ 750,000 people.