Will Your Business Will Receive Money from the Second Round of Small Business Loan Funding?

Second Round of Small Business Loan Funding

A second round of emergency funding for small businesses opened on Monday.

While this news came as a relief for many small business owners, it appears that error messages and slow processing have prevented many from accessing the fund. A spokesperson for the SBA said, "The pacing mechanism prevents any one lender from submitting thousands of loans an hour into the E-TRAN system. If a lender goes above the pacing limit they will get timed out."

ButCNN reports that a banking industry source said that things are actually much worse than the SBA made it seem. "The SBA system simply cannot handle the volume of applications banks have processed from America's small businesses," this person said, adding: "Unless SBA set the pace at one an hour (or less), this is nothing but misdirection. Banks are working to deliver assistance and SBA is passing the blame."

In fairness, the SBA typically hands out about $25 billion in loans every calendar year. Thanks to the global health crisis, they're now suddenly trying to get $310 billion in PPP loans out the door as quickly as possible, so delays are to be expected.

But, even more worryingly, there is a major possibility many small businesses won't see any money this time around either. The last pot of money given out to small businesses was, obviously, insufficient in addressing the needs of many American business owners impacted by the crisis. So how far will the money go this time? Multiple industry experts contacted by CNN "anticipate that this money could be gone within the week. Last time, it took 13 days, but banks have a much longer queue of customers this round."

In summary, millions of eligible businesses are not going to get PPP funding, even if they applied in a timely manner. If you've already submitted an application, all you can do now is hope and wait.