Ashley Bell, entrepreneurship policy adviser for the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, said the SBA has responded to the high demand by opening up new avenues for more lenders to join.
"The key is to find a lender that is willing to work with you," he said. "I'm pretty sure that most dealers have that relationship, and we're working very closely with the lenders to make sure they have everything they need to get them the capital that they so desperately need right now."
Bell, 40, also is the Southeast regional administrator for the Small Business Administration. He spoke with Staff Reporter Audrey LaForest about the unprecedented challenges caused by the novel coronavirus. Here are edited excerpts.
Q: How has the administration been handling the influx of loan applications and demand from small businesses such as dealerships seeking emergency aid?
A: Our phones are ringing off the hook. There's tremendous demand and because of that, SBA has increased our staff. We've increased our call centers. We're deploying new staff to all our districts in the coming weeks to assist with handling the incoming requests. The demand is historic, so that's going to take a very historic response from our federal government to meet it.
How does lending during the COVID-19 crisis and economic downturn compare with an average lending year?
The difference is so stark that it's not really a comparison. In a great economy, SBA actually does less lending because people can find credit elsewhere.
We had a great economy that was booming, and people had lots of options to find credit, but SBA was always there.
Now, we basically serve not only America's small businesses, but America's small churches and America's small nonprofits.
How will the Paycheck Protection Program help dealers navigate these significant financial hardships?
We offer a tremendous opportunity to have their payroll as well as some expenses paid through a forgivable loan for eight weeks. This program will allow you to keep your employees on payroll. If you've let some people go after Feb. 15, you're allowed to go back and hire them. We will fund that.
All we ask you to do is to keep people on payroll because the spirit of this law is to address the millions of Americans that are unemployed right now.
Many dealers who have applied for loans are still waiting. What steps should they take?
We understand the need for capital and cash right now, and we understand that for this program to work, we had to establish a strong public-private relationship with the American financial industry.
To facilitate the rapid disbursement of capital, SBA delegated authority to the banks to approve these loans and to manage the Paycheck Protection Program, which means that the decision for approval is at the local level — at the lender, at the bank. The decision, ultimately, to make the loan forgivable is also at the lender level.
Any calming advice for dealers?
Dealers are in a unique position to take advantage of the Paycheck Protection Program because by the very nature of their business they have a strong relationship with a lender already.
They should use that to their advantage as business owners because the speed at which they receive those resources will depend on the relationship they have with their banker.
Put that in comparison to the millions of small-business owners that we are working with right now that have no banking relationship, that don't have active loans or lines of credit with bankers.
They face a very extraordinary challenge. ... If your lender is not accepting new applications or is not lending, please make sure that you reach out to SBA to find out who is lending.
