FFC Joins SBA in Pilot Program to Streamline 504 Approval Process

Because of the quantity and quality of the 504 loan requests it submits to the SBA for approval, Florida First Capital Finance Corporation (FFCFC) has been chosen to participate in a national SBA Pilot program known as the Abridged Submission Method (ASM). The ASM Pilot significantly streamlines the document submission process and is expected to greatly reduce the approval time for 504 loan requests.

As with its other streamlining efforts, the SBA goal is to promote efficient use of staff and other valuable resources. In this specific case, the SBA proposes to meet the following goals through the ASM Pilot:

• Enhance SBA’s ability to process 504 applications efficiently,
• Reduce the physical size of the 504 application,
• Reduce the cost of shipping and storing files, and
• Reduce the paperwork submission burden on CDCs.

On a historical note, the Small Business Administration completed the process of transferring all 504 loan processing on September 30, 2004 to a centralized loan processing center in Sacramento, California. This was a significant step in allowing the agency to develop more consistent and efficient processes. Since then, SBA has been considering other ways to streamline the approval process for both CDC's and SBA staff. The ASM Pilot is the result of analysis of the processing actions currently performed, which determined that its 504 approval process could be improved by means of several modifications. The agency will be testing these modifications by means of this one year ASM Pilot.

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