It may not come as a surprise that the largest bank in the country JP Morgan Chase facilitated the greatest flow of Paycheck Protection Program dollars this year, with more than $12.1 billion in loans approved from the start of the latest round in January to its closing on May 31.
But one of the nation's top PPP lenders, according to datafrom the Small Business Administration, is a much smaller kind of organization: Prestamos CDFI in Phoenix.
Prestamos, a community financial development institution that is part of Chicanos Por La Causa, was the third largest PPP lender in the nation by dollar amount, in 2021 doing more than $7.6 billion in loans, ranking behind only Chase and Bank of America, which facilitated more than $8.9 billion in PPP loans.
Prestamos also has the distinction of making the most PPP loans nationwide this year, getting approval on more than 494,000 loans, hundreds of thousands more loans approved than the Big Three banks.
In fact, Prestamos got approval on more PPP loans in 2021 than Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo combined.
“I'm just so proud that I can say that we made a difference in this country,” David Adame, the president of Chicanos Por La Causa, said in an interview. “That’s why we created CPLC, to help everybody.”
