A common complaint in the years since the financial crisis began has been that Wall Street banks that were bailed out by the federal government haven’t been lending enough to Main Street businesses. Critics may now have a little less reason to beef, however, because last month big banks approved small business loans at the highest rate in more than two years, according to an index compiled by a business-lending middleman. Biz2Credit calculates its monthly Small Business Lending Index using 1,000 loan applications made over its online lending platform. The index defines large banks as those with $10 billion or more in assets; it also includes data for small banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders. The findings: Big banks approved 15.9 percent of the small business loan applications in the index, up from 15.3 percent in January 2013 and 11.7 percent in February 2012. February’s big bank approval rates were the highest since Biz2Credit began compiling the index in January 2011. Small bank approval rates have also ticked up, to 50.3 percent of loans in February, up from 49.9 percent in the previous month and from 47.6 percent in February 2012. Biz2Credit Chief Executive Officer Rohit Arora pointed to a handful of reasons for higher approval rates: A stable economy over the past 18 months has given banks an historical basis for making loans, and attractive premiums on securities backed by Small Business Administration-guaranteed loans are giving banks greater incentive to work with small businesses.

CFPB - Small Banks Have Bigger Worries Than US
American Banker
(3-11-13)

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is targeting large banks and a wide variety of nonbanks rather than community banks, a regional director of the bureau said last week. In fact, the next industry in the CFPB's crosshairs is nonbank collection agencies, Jim Carley, the bureau's Southeast regional director, said during a panel discussion in Greensboro, N.C., hosted by the North Carolina Bankers Association. The CFPB is already looking into payday lenders, mortgage servicers, mortgage origination firms and credit bureaus. "We're focusing our attention on the larger banks and the nonbanks," Carley told a crowd dominated by community bankers and directors. "So we are continuing to push out into these other sectors that have not had [regulators] supervising them for the last 75 or 80 years." The CFPB is only allowed to conduct examinations of banks with $10 billion or more in assets, he noted. Banks twice that size are considered community banks, but the lion's share of them are well below the threshold.

Senate Appropriators Release Expanded Stopgap Spending Package
CQ Roll Call
(3-11-13)

Senate appropriators unveiled their version of a continuing resolution that would fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year while giving many federal agencies more leeway to manage spending cuts under sequester. The fiscal 2013 spending package expands on the stopgap funding plan (HR 933) passed by the House last week but maintains the same overall spending level as part of an aim to avoid an impasse that could lead to a government shutdown. Introduced jointly Monday evening by Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., and the committee’s top-ranking Republican, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the Senate version includes three more of the fiscal 2013 spending bills — Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science and Homeland Security — and adds exceptions sought by lawmakers. The House-passed version includes new Military Construction-Veterans Affairs and Defense bills. The exceptions, or anomalies, reflect items agreed to last year during House-Senate negotiations on fiscal 2013 spending bills, GOP aides said. They said the Senate bill does not provide additional funds for implementing the 2010 health care law or the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law. It also won’t contain wider reprogramming authority that earlier had been considered, the aides said. Like the House bill, the Senate measure sticks with current spending caps, which effectively will drop the flow of new spending authority to about $984 billion under sequester from $1.043 trillion.

CDFI Bond Guarantee Program - Outreach Session PowerPoint Now Available
CDFI Fund
(3-11-13)

The CDFI Fund is pleased to have met a critical milestone in the implementation of the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program: the release of the interim rule in the Federal Register on February 5, 2013. Comments are welcomed and are due on April 8, 2013. To ensure that the industry has complete and accurate information about the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program, it posted the PowerPoint presentation used during those information sessions. The presentation can be found on the CDFI Fund’s website. The CDFI Fund hopes the information provided in the presentation will be useful to Qualified Issuer and Guarantee Applicants once the program is fully implemented.

After Sandy, Government Lends to Rebuild in Flood Zones
ProPublica  
(3-6-13)    

A WNYC and ProPublica analysis of federal data shows at least 10,500 home and business owners have been approved for $766 million in SBA disaster loans to rebuild in areas that the government now says could flood again in the next big storm. The data, which shows loans approved through mid-February, was obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. More loans could be going to flood-prone areas. The loans require borrowers to get flood insurance, which in turn could encourage some to rebuild properties to be more flood-resistant. However, for many owners there’s no requirement they raise their properties to the heights FEMA recommends. The result: the federal government is helping people rebuild despite the risk that flooding will again destroy the properties. The SBA says it’s not their job to assess whether it’s smart to build in flood-prone areas. Such a hands-off approach worries a diverse coalition of advocates -- including conservative groups, environmental organizations, insurance associations and housing coalitions. These groups are urging government at all levels to change the way it builds in disaster-prone areas and insures such properties.