A Policy Update from the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

Important Policy Update on the

Paycheck Protection Program

Dear Chamber Leaders and Small Business Owners,

On behalf of our Board of Directors, we wanted to provide you an update on the latest legislation impacting your business. Today, the Small Business Administration (SBA) resumed accepting PPP loan applications from participating lenders.

On Friday, April 24th, the President signed the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act into law. The supplemental legislation provides an additional $310 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and an additional $60 billion for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. In addition, $30 billion has been set aside for minority depository institutions (MDIs) and community development financial institutions (CDFIs) to ensure that PPP funds reach Hispanic and minority-owned small businesses that may not have an existing relationship with a financial institution, a major advocacy effort led by the USHCC.

We urge all USHCC Hispanic Business Enterprises (HBEs) to follow up with your bank or lender on the status of your application.

If you are an HBE that has not yet applied for funding please do so as soon as possible.

As of 3:30 pm EDT today, the SBA has processed more than 100,000 PPP loans by more than 4,000 lenders.

Unprecedented demand is slowing E-Tran response times. Currently, there are double the number of users accessing the system compared to any day during the initial round of PPP. The SBA is actively working to ensure system security and integrity while loan processing continues. The SBA is working around the clock to help all U.S. small businesses during these challenging times.

To view an updated list of participating SBA Lenders: click here.

We also encourage you to seek help from local CDFIs or MDIs in your community as they may be able to assist you in the case that you do not have a strong banking relationship with a large bank. Please review the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Round II Technical Assistance Resource Guide from the USHCC for more detailed information.

Over the weekend, the SBA and the U.S. Department of Treasury released guidance to impose limits on how much PPP participants can lend in the program. The new rule limits lenders to ten percent of the program’s overall funding, or $60 billion in total. This release is in addition to new guidance that directs financial institutions to slow the pace of applications for the program. The SBA will allow lenders that have 15,000 SBA-ready PPP loan applications to make a one-time bulk submission of .XML files to E-Tran, for faster processing.

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We also have many resources available on our website in English and Spanish.

Download the PPP Application

Frequently Asked Questions

When can I apply?

Starting Friday, April 3, 2020 if you are a small business or sole proprietorship, you became eligible to apply. Starting Friday, April 10, 2020 if you are an independent contractor or self-employed individual, you became eligible to apply. We urge you to apply as soon as possible, before funds run out.

How do I apply?

Complete the application and provide additional requested documentation to verify expenses such as payroll information or tax documents, among other details.

Where do I apply?

You can apply by submitting your completed forms to an SBA 7(a) lender. Click here for a list of SBA’s 100 most active SBA 7(a) lenders. You can also call your local bank to find out if they are an approved lender.

Beware of phishing scams and fake SBA websites!

Be careful! Criminals have already begun targeting small business owners during these economically difficult times. Be on the lookout for grant fraud, loan fraud, and phishing scams that have been identified this week related to the economic stimulus programs offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) in response to COVID-19 and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act).

SBA will not initiate contact on either 7(a) or disaster loans or grants. If you are proactively contacted by someone claiming to be from the SBA, suspect fraud.

If you are contacted by someone promising to get approval of an SBA loan, but requires any payment up front or offers a high interest bridge loan in the interim, suspect fraud.

Look out for phishing scams utilizing the SBA logo. Any email communication from SBA will come from accounts ending with sba.gov. These may be attempts to obtain your personally identifiable information to obtain personal banking access, or to install ransomware/malware on your computer.