Did You Know?

Business Finance Group is fully staffed with underwriting, packaging, closing and servicing teams to help our banking partners and their customers through the process. In the last issue, we profiled our closing process, and in this issue we are going back to profile our approval process.

If our bank partner provides an introduction to their customer, we can collect all of the required information, structure, and analyze the transaction supplying the banker with our credit memo and a copy of the package. Our goal is to make the process as simple as possible for both you and your customer.

Once underwritten, our internal approval process includes review of an application by our Chief Credit Officer followed by an internal loan committee review. Our loan committees meet weekly so that transactions can move quickly through the process. Our loan officers make the presentation to the loan committee, and generally speaking, we try to screen out applications that we don’t believe will be approved in advance to save everyone time and trouble.

Our loan committees are comprised principally of bankers (although other community-minded individuals are welcome!). Our goal is to have sufficient individuals to allow 2 committees to meet weekly with each individual serving only once per month. Credit memos are sent out on Thursday and the committee meets by telephone conference on Friday mornings (You can be located anywhere in Maryland, the District of Columbia, or Virginia and join in). To participate in loan committee, you must be approved by our Board of Directors to be a member of the organization. If you are interested in participating, please let Sally Robertson know at srobertson@businessfinancegroup.org.

Once the loan has our internal loan committee approval, our packagers begin the process of obtaining signatures and collecting any remaining documentation. After it’s sent to SBA, an approval is generally received 5-7 days later. The approval takes the form of the Authorization for Debenture Guarantee (the SBA commitment document) that outlines all the terms of the approval. Once the borrower executes, our packagers e-mail the document to our bank partner allowing you to review the terms and conditions prior to closing the bank loan.

If you have any questions on our approval process or would like to participate in our loan committees, please contact Sally Robertson or Wayne Garcia (wgarcia@businessfinancegroup.org)