Great Southern helps boost small-business lending fund


Great Southern Bank led Missouri banking institutions receiving capital funding through the federal Small Business Lending Fund, increasing fund lending for the sixth consecutive quarter.

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Use of Funds report, nine Missouri banks participated in the program. Of those, seven increased lending over its baseline by more than $121.9 million. Nationwide, 326 SBLF participants increased lending by $7.4 billion, according to a news release. As established in the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, the baseline for measuring the change in small-business lending is the average of the amounts reported for each of the four calendar quarters ending June 30, 2010.

Great Southern led all Missouri banks in monies loaned: $82.8 million, shooting up 41 percent. Southern Missouri Bancorp Inc. of Poplar Bluff posted the second-largest loan volume at $36.7 million, growing 19.5 percent. Cardinal Bancorp II Inc. of Washington loaned $6.9 million over baseline, an increase of 11 percent; Liberty Bancorp Inc. of Liberty loaned $17.8 million, increasing 21.9 percent; Charleston-based Security State Bancshares Inc. loaned $25.3 million, up 14.3 percent; The Landrum Co. of Columbia loaned $3.9 million, edging up 0.9 percent; and Frontenac-based Triad Bancorp Inc., loaned $14.5 million, strengthening by 47.8 percent.

On the other end of the scale, Springfield-based Liberty Bancshares Inc. decreased lending by $60.4 million below baseline, falling 19.8 percent, and Fortune Financial corp. of Arnold decreased lending by $6.08 million, declining 13 percent.

Aiming to encourage lending to small businesses by providing capital to community banks with less than $10 billion in assets, the SBLF program reduces the dividend or interest rate a community bank pays on funding as the bank increases its lending to small businesses. As of Sept. 30, the average rate paid by community banks on SBLF capital was 2 percent. However, banks can reduce the rate to 1 percent by increasing qualified small-business lending by 10 percent over their baseline, according to the release.

The SBLF program was established as part of President Barack Obama’s Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. The Treasury Department invested more than $4 billion in 332 institutions, operating in more than 3,000 locations across 48 states.

“Community banks participating in the Obama administration’s Small Business Lending Fund have consistently increased small-business lending during the past two years, resulting in increased access to capital for thousands of small and family-owned businesses across the country,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin said in the release.