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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
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SDNY COURT / SOUTH BRONX, June 13 –     Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, fair lending and the Community Reinvestment Act are taking a back seat, or worse. Some banks to which CRA applies are excluding smaller businesses and those in communities of color. And some banks bragging about the PPP loans won't provide any information - we are Pressing.

   Inner City Press / Community on the Move has begun contacting both banks and non-banks for their Paycheck Protection Program data. Without yet getting into the full results, we want to make a contrast not only to the contempt for CRA and public disclosure shown by Joseph Otting, now with Black Knight but also his OneWest crony and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin calling PPP information "proprietary."

 The contrast is to the answers by a sample bank, PNC, to questions Inner City Press / Community on the Move put to it and others:

"Hello again, Matthew. I am able to answer most but not all of your questions. As you know, the Paycheck Protection Program is still active but I can provide the most recent information on hand: 

1. How many loans have you made pursuant to the programs? We have registered more than 74,000 applications from small business customers in 49 states and the District of Columbia. 

2. What is the total dollar amount of loans made pursuant to the program ? $14.1 billion 

3. What is the average loan size? The average loan amount for all of our SBA registered loans is less than $190,000, demonstrating that our efforts reached many of the smallest businesses in need. 

4. What is the distribution by loan size (e.g. LTE $99,999, $100,000-$999,999, $1mm-$10mm) of the loans made pursuant to the program?  Approximately 80 percent of the total applications that we have been able to successfully register with the SBA are for amounts of $150,000 or less; and an additional 10 percent are for amounts of $350,000 or less (but more than $150,000). Although the statutory maximum PPP loan size per business is $10 million, only 0.4 percent of our total SBA-registered applications are for amounts above $5 million. 

5. What is the distribution of the average annual revenues of borrowers under your program (e.g., LTE $99,999, $100,000-$999,999, $1mm-$5mm)? This information was not required to be provided on the SBA PPP application. 

6. How many loans have you made to qualifying tax-exempt non-profits?  What is the total dollar amount of those loans? We also took special care to ensure that applications from non-profit organizations were not left behind. We have successfully registered more than 4,600 PPP applications totaling $1.24 billion from non-profit organizations throughout our footprint.

 7. How many loans have you made to hotels and restaurants (NAICS code beginning with 72)?  What is the total dollar amount of those loans? This information is not available. 

8. What is the distribution of loans by number of employees of the borrower (e.g., 1-10, 11-50, 51-100, 101-250, 251-5000?  Eighty two percent of our SBA-registered loans are for businesses with twenty or fewer employees, and an additional ten percent are for businesses with 21 to 50 employees. Only six percent of our SBA-registered loans are for businesses with between 51 and 250 employees, and only one percent for businesses with more than 250 employees. Clearly, our efforts assisted some of the smallest businesses across our communities. 

9. What percentage of your PPP loans are to borrowers with a previous borrowing relationship with your institution? We require that the borrower have a business relationship with us, which could mean a loan or deposit relationship. The vast majority (85 percent) of the PPP applications we have processed and registered with the SBA are from our Business Banking clients, which is our business segment that services business clients (including non-profits, sole proprietors and independent contractors) with less than $5 million in annual revenues. Only approximately 15 percent of the PPP loans that we submitted and that have been registered by the SBA are from eligible businesses within our Corporate & Institutional Bank, which services businesses with $5 million or more in annual revenues, or other business segments... On our PPP applications from small businesses operating in low- or moderate-income (LMI) geographies, as you know these areas are frequently the hardest hit in periods of economic stress. I am pleased to report that we have assisted more than 15,400 small business located in LMI census tracts receive SBA registration for their loans aggregating to approximately $3.36 billion. To further support small businesses that may lack access to traditional financial institutions, PNC has committed nearly $50 million to eight community development financial institutions (CDFIs) since March 2020 to support their own origination of PPP loans in potentially underserved geographies and sectors."

  Contrast this to the "proprietary information" dodge - and note for example that the highest overdraft fee bank in America, Ameris Bank has for now responded to Inner City Press' questions by stating that: "Information about our Paycheck Protection Program participation can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  Sincerely,  William D. McKendry EVP and Chief Risk Officer Ameris Bank. " UNacceptable.

  We'll have more on this and others, including fintechs. Watch this site.

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