US becomes first country to surpass 1 million known coronavirus cases
Bank of America sent 184,000 Payroll Protection Applications to the Small Business Administration on behalf of clients, but only 1,000 of those loans have been approved so far, according to a letter the bank shared with CNN.
Although the SBA didn’t immediately return CNN’s request for comment, a senior administration official defended the agency by citing the number of applications approved across all lenders.
The SBA has approved over 500,000 loans valued at over $55 billion as of Tuesday afternoon, the official told CNN.
“To keep our clients informed and up to date, we have sent over 10 million emails to them. Today, we will communicate to each client whose application has been submitted to the SBA, advising them the loan application has been submitted, and we will notify each client promptly when the SBA has acted on the application,» wrote Dean Athanasia, who is president Consumer and Small Business at Bank of America, in a memo to his senior leadership staff.
Bank of America has “another 48,000 client applications ready for the SBA,” Athanasia wrote in the memo.
“On Monday – after a 10-day delay waiting for additional funding from Congress, and then developing the additional guidelines for the program – the SBA began accepting PPP applications again,” Athanasia wrote.
The memo added, “since they reopened at 10:30 am on Monday, we have been uploading these to the SBA through their slower, more manual process.»
