SiliconANGLE Article by Jason Bloomberg
When the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security or CARES Act became law on March 27, it created the Paycheck Protection Program, a novel lending program targeting small businesses in the U.S.
By any metric, the PPP was unprecedented – the number of businesses that applied, the amount of money lenders disbursed and, perhaps most striking, how little time lenders had to implement the program. Typically, new commercial loan products can take up to two years to roll out. For the PPP, lenders had two weeks.
The challenging situation sent technology companies scrambling to come up with solutions for lenders to address the program — in particular using emerging technologies such as low-code programming and process automation.
“The PPP hit a lot of hot buttons for us,” explained Michael Heffner, vice president of global industry leads at low-code automation provider Appian Corp. “We recognized the level of urgency. The law was passed, and the program started two weeks later. The typical timeframe for launching a commercial lending product was 18 months to two years.”
The story of how lenders across the country – banks of all sizes as well as nonbank lenders, including credit unions and online lenders – rose to this challenge, with the help of technology companies, is remarkable. (* Disclosure below.) Here’s an inside look:
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