The Small Business Administration should delegate less decision-making power to lenders in a key government lending program and should make major changes to its disaster loan program, an official of the Government Accountability Office told lawmakers yesterday.
The SBA's Preferred Lender Program would run more efficiently and be less expensive if the agency were able to make more decisions about lending itself, William B. Shear, director of Financial Markets and Community Investments for the GAO told the House Small Business Committee.
Shear's comments on the Preferred Lender program were made in passing while discussing the GAO's report on the SBA's disaster loan programs.
He said the agency hasn't complied with all of the congressionally mandated changes-although it had cut down on the response time for applications-on the disaster loan programs but the SBA would be hard pressed to respond to a disaster of the scope of Hurricane Katrina.
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