Crestmark funded more than $215 million for small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), part of the CARES Act stimulus package. Crestmark has provided funds for more than 670 small businesses in 38 states as part of the program. More than half of the businesses were not existing clients of Crestmark and more than 56% of the total loan sizes were for less than $100,000.
“Providing financing to small businesses who might otherwise not be able to get the funding they need is core to what we do,” Mick Goik, head of the commercial finance division of MetaBank, said. “Combine that with our ‘we help’ philosophy, and it was natural that our employees were all hands on deck for processing as many loans through the SBA program as quickly as we could — whether they were a client of ours or not. It was disappointing to hear that so many businesses were being turned away by other lenders. The program was intended to help all small businesses.”
“While the PPP process was challenging due to the speed in which it was assembled, we were focused on staying engaged and are proud to have helped so many small businesses,” Christopher Soupal, head of government guaranteed lending at Crestmark, said. “Many of these were small businesses with less than five employees, the kind of enterprises that quickly could have been out of business. It was a tremendous honor getting to work with these entrepreneurs and their companies. Aside from the business impact, we estimate that our engagement could have saved over 20,000 jobs.”
Crestmark is working on a plan to assist small businesses in preparing their submissions for loan forgiveness. In addition to the PPP initiative, Crestmark continued business as usual, and in April provided asset-based lending, account receivable financing, equipment financing and SBA loans of $76.5 million in 162 new client transactions.
Crestmark, a division of MetaBank, provides asset-based lending, accounts receivable financing, lines of credit, term loans, factoring, government guaranteed lending, machinery/equipment financing and equipment leasing.
