In the first two weeks, the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) PPP loan forgiveness tool has accepted more than 340,000 submissions. And the SBA says the response has surpassed expectations. Are you one of the 340K small businesses that used the PPP loan forgiveness portal? If so, kudos for taking advantage of the simplified tool to get your PPP loan forgiven.
Loan Forgiveness Portal Popular in First 2 Weeks
The streamlined PPP loan forgiveness process is specifically designed to address small businesses with loans under $150,000. With this platform, businesses with these loan amounts can submit a request for loan forgiveness directly to their lender from the Direct Forgiveness SBA website.
Prior to the PPP loan forgiveness portal, borrowers had to download the forms or get them from their banks to initiate the forgiveness process. And according to the SBA, “Some lenders had not yet built the technology or processes to even begin accepting forgiveness applications, and many did not actively reach out to borrowers to help them through the process.”
The SBA goes on to say, this explains the reason millions of borrowers, including more than 700,000 loans made in 2020, didn’t submit this one-page application. After signing up and registering, you can fill the form in as little as six minutes on PCs or smartphones. You will then receive forgiveness decisions within a week from the date of submission.
PPP Loan Forgiveness Tool Approval Rate
The SBA says half of the 340,000 applications in the portal have full or partial forgiveness approval. This comes out to more than $2.4 billion for these borrowers.
The portal addresses borrowers with less than $150k, which total 10,523,956 small businesses as of August 15, 2021. To date, there have been 4,988,220 submissions from these borrowers for 2020 and 2021.
A further breakdown shows the smallest businesses or borrowers with less than $50,000 make up the largest percentage of the overall PPP loans. They represent 9,009,866 businesses, but they also make up the group with the fewest number of applicants for forgiveness. On the other hand, borrowers between $50,001 to $149,999 make up 1,524,090 of borrowers. However, 65.3% of them, or 989,062 have submitted their applications for forgiveness.
If you are one of the 5,535,736 small businesses with a loan of less than $150,000 make sure to take advantage of the portal and apply today. There are also more opportunities for funding to keep your small business going with SBA grants for underserved communities.