Bankers meet with Small Business Administration

More than a dozen officials representing eight local and regional banks met Tuesday in the Twin Cities to learn about making better use of their Small Business Administration loaning ability.

During the 90-minute luncheon, bankers listened to four small-business development leaders encourage more SBA lending in the Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas regions.

“We are underserved by SBA loans in the area,” said Curt Green, owner of Curt Green & Co. local commercial real estate, construction and investment firm. “We are needing as much growth as we can get, and that can be helped by having more SBA loans available in this area.”

Green said that with Texarkana, Texas, projected to see only about a one-half percent economic growth during the next few years—while Texarkana, Ark., may face negative growth in the same time frame—the need to jump start the area's commercial development is more important then ever before, making SBA loan availability all the more important.

“At least 80 percent of the business in this area is small business,” he said. “We need more SBA program loan participation here, because if we don't grow, we are going to stagnate.”

Green found out from the bankers that there is no SBA loan activity among the banks represented at the meeting.

“There has got to be some reason why local small-business owners aren't seeking SBA loans for something other then just building add-ons and expansions,” Green said.

Following Green's presentation, Megan Whitehead, center director for Magnolia-based Southern Arkansas University's Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center, then spoke about the various resources the center has to offer small businesses.

Some of the benefits the center has to offer include customer targeting and profiling, customer demographics, business marketing trends and challenges, marketing size assessment, local customer traffic volume, population density, business competition location, customer disposable income potential and customer age, gender and net worth.

Whitehead said the center has helped manufacturing clients, as well as poultry and cattle farms, get started in business.

“Most of our clients hear about us through lenders, and a lot of the time, people come to our office and learn more about what it takes to start a business,” she said. “Some have discovered that they aren't ready yet because they find out that they need twice the capital they already have to get started.”

Tim Wilson, director of the Mount Pleasant, Texas-based Northeast Texas Small Business Development Center, said his and Whitehead's centers have been coordinating and integrating their services for small businesses in the Texarkana area in recent months, including a joint presentation in Texarkana in February.

Wilson started his presentation by distributing an 11-page booklet detailing at least 19 services his center offers small businesses. They include aid in business management, marketing, bookkeeping, budgeting and inventory, as well as business loan proposing, planning, customer contact listing and counseling.

Other services offered include customer demographic research, financial analyzing, lender locating, government contracting, loan packaging, market research, online resources and computer search engine use.

“We also help clients understand finance in order to help them see if their business plan will fly, or if it needs to be sent back to the drawing board,” he said. “We haven't yet conducted a lot of business aid in the Texarkana area, but we're trying, and we will spend all the time necessary with a client.”

Whitehead also said that her center hasn't had a strong presence in Texarkana, but she added that she hopes to change that.

“This is why we needed you all here today, so we could speak to you,” she said.

Al Hodge, executive vice president of the Little Rock-based Arkansas Capital Corporation Group, told the bankers gathered at the Texarkana Chamber of Commerce that after spending 30 years in the small-business loan industry, he has seen the time it takes to process a loan application go down from an average of six weeks to two weeks—mainly because the SBA has been more streamlined.

Green concluded the luncheon by asking the bankers to try to make more SBA loans.

“We are doing everything we can to help our community grow, and we need your help,” he said.