United Bank & Trust Blog

Mike Chatas

Even though the economy seems to be rebounding, it’s still a rough time to be a small business owner in Michigan. Credit is tight, and banks are being squeezed by losses, loan defaults, and by regulators urging caution. Even more, bigger regional banks aren’t lending as much as they used to in our state, so the pressure on community banks like United has grown.

Well, I’m happy to say United is doing something big for small business – we’re still lending. You see, even before the economy took a nose dive, we were planning ahead. We invested in the infrastructure and staffing to create United Structured Finance, and to build the expertise we needed to take advantage of government loan programs from the Small Business Administration.

There are two ways we use the SBA program to the advantage of our business customers. Number one is through a guaranty of up to 90% of the loan from the SBA. This allows us to sell the guaranteed portion of the loan into other markets, which replenishes our cash. Second, the SBA will participate in the loan – that is put up a portion of the money – so that United maintains more cash available to lend.

We want to lend as much as possible to keep our local economy healthy and growing. We’re the number one SBA lender (in dollars approved) in Washtenaw, Livingston and Lenawee Counties, with over $20 million lent in the past year. These programs help us support economic development and job retention, right here, right now. In 2009, we helped to retain over 567 jobs in Michigan.

We know that there’s nothing small about small business. So we’re making a big effort to help small business thrive. If you’d like to know more, take advantage of my webinar on November 18, 2009 at 4:00pm. Click here to learn more.