Situation:
A small Midwestern community bank that was relatively unfamiliar with the Small Business Administration's loan process was attempting to use the SBA’s 7A loan program to offer a borrower a real estate loan. The borrower was a retail facility looking for a commercial real estate loan to secure the building that it conducts its business. The bank was looking to satisfy the SBA requirements for environmental due diligence so it could offer this loan.

How ORMS helped:
Prior to calling ORMS, the lender was somewhat confused on how to meet the SBA requirements. After a quick conversation between the lender and ORMS, we worked together to 1) understand the property and its current and former operations, and 2) determine which due diligence level was required at the property, and 3) produced the correct level of due diligence for the property within 3 days (Records Search with Risk Assessment due to the low risk nature of the property).

In addition, ORMS assisted the lender and the SBA district counsel to better understand the SBA environmental requirements which saved the borrower about $600 and the lender many days to let them meet their deadlines.

Lessons Learned:
By utilizing ORMS as their outsourced risk management department, this lender was able to not only complete the necessary due diligence to the satisfaction of the SBA, but also to save their customer money in the process. In addition, the due diligence was acceptable to the SBA and the small business borrower secured another 5 year loan at a favorable rate and term via the SBA. Finally, the cost to use ORMS was negligible.