FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—In an effort to give small businesses a leg-up in exporting their products abroad, two government agencies are partnering on an initiative to simplify small banks’ paperwork and give American exporters quicker access to loans.
On Thursday, the Export-Import Bank and the Small Business Administration launched the Community Lender Enhancement Initiative, a program meant to simplify the process of smaller banks getting access to federal financing.
Export-Import Bank is a federal credit agency that seeks to provide financing for American exporters to give them a competitive advantage.
“Thousands of community lenders serve markets that larger financial institutions often overlook. By simplifying documentation and partnering with SBA, EXIM is supporting American workers and the small businesses that employ them,” reads an EXIM document viewed by the Daily Signal.
“The Trump Administration is prioritizing the tools and resources American businesses need to compete on the global market,” it adds. “Actions like this that streamline existing programs, cut red tape, and prioritize partnerships across the federal government will help small businesses grow.”
Specifically, the export credit agency is taking on some of community lenders’ “collateral management burden,” in which smaller banks have to gather information on the assets exporters are using as collateral for financing.
“The idea is that lenders will be able to utilize our program without the fear of, ‘we don’t know how to do asset-based lending,’” said Mark Klein, EXIM’s managing director of lender accounts, in a video announcing the program.
Klein argues the program will open up the credit agency’s financing tools to smaller banks and, in turn, help mom-and-pop American exporters.
“Bottom line is you don’t have to be a big bank to use EXIM,” Klein said. “We’re going to allow [smaller banks] to play in the same arena as the large money center banks because we’re going to take a lot of that back-office burden off your plate.”
Export-Import Bank is also aligning its U.S. content threshold requirements—or the percentage of an exporter’s goods that have to be of U.S. origin in order to get access to financing—with those of the SBA.
