{meta_title}

Florida CFO Takes Lead on Encouraging Small Business Lending

Dec 2009

Florida CFO Alex Sink recently announced specific steps she has taken to encourage more small business lending in Florida and help create jobs in the state.

“With small businesses representing over 90% of all businesses in Florida, it is critical to our state's economic recovery that we do everything we can to support Florida's small business owners,” said CFO Sink. “I have expressed to Florida's financial institutions, from our community banks to our top lenders, that I expect them to use everything at their disposal to offer small businesses what they need -- better access to capital.”

CFO Sink took the following steps to promote participation and accountability in the recently announced Small Business Lending Initiative:

• Encouraging 167 community banks in Florida to participate in the federal Small Business Lending Initiative and noting how important it is for community banks to provide the capital needed for Florida's small business community (click here to read letter).
• Requesting that Office of Financial Regulation Commissioner Tom Cardwell monitor small business lending activity and provide a report to the Financial Services Commission (click here to read letter).
• Reaching out to executives at Florida's five largest banks (Bank of America, Wachovia/Wells Fargo, SunTrust, Regions and BB&T) to inquire about their current levels of lending in Florida and encourage them to set aside more funding for small business lending.

During CFO Sink's recent discussions with representatives from the major financial institutions in the state, she heard multiple times there was not enough flexibility with regard to loans backed by commercial real estate as collateral. Given this observation, CFO Sink commended the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for adopting guidelines on prudent commercial real estate loan workouts recently.

“The FDIC's new guidelines will not only help Florida's businesses get the modifications they need to stay in their establishments, but will increase the amount of capital available to loan to new small businesses,” CFO Sink said. “I heard overwhelmingly from Florida's lenders that they needed more flexibility in this area and I am pleased the FDIC was able to strike a balance of prudent credit practices and meeting legitimate credit needs.”

Under the FDIC guidelines recently released, loans to creditworthy borrowers that have been restructured and are current will not be classified as high risk by regulators solely because the collateral backing them has declined to an amount less than the loan balance.

For more information on the Federal Small Business Lending Initiative, visit: http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/small_business_final.pdf.

For more information about the new FDIC guidelines for commercial real estate loan workouts, visit: http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/2009/fil09061.html.

For more information about 504 loans in Florida, contact Florida First Capital by visiting www.ffcfc.com, emailing us at insider@ffcfc.com or calling 888.320.5504.