SBA ends bot access to E-tran system  

The Small Business Administration has restricted the use of robotic processing automation, or RPA, to enter Paycheck Protection Program loan applications amid lenders’ significant difficulties accessing the E-Tran system. 
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“RPAs burden the processing system and diminish its capabilities,” SBA said in a message to lenders. “Without RPAs, the loan processing system will be more reliable, accessible, and equitable for all small businesses.”
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SBA is still permitting lenders to submit PPP applications through application programming interfaces, or APIs. For assistance converting an RPA process to an API, SBA advised lenders to contact agency official Sheri McConville at sheri.mcconville@sba.gov . 

The Small Business Administration approved roughly 100,000 Paycheck Protection Program loans from more than 4,000 lenders by 3:30 p.m. EDT yesterday, the agency said on the first day it accepted loan applications after new funding was authorized.

Banks of every size experienced significant difficulty accessing SBA's E-Tran and submitting bulk applications. 


The Paycheck Protection Program has garnered $2 billion to loan to US small businesses after some first-round borrowers returned their money or declined funds after being approved.
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The confusion in the paycheck loans  continued into Monday . Don Childears, CEO of the Colorado Bankers Association, said the SBA seemed to be limiting the number of loans a bank could apply for without letting the banks know what that number was. Bloomberg reported Monday that the SBA was  limiting loans to 350 per hour per lender .

“In the first round, the SBA was completely unprepared and we had major technical problems with access to their system,” Childears said on Monday. “Today, the access seems to be about decisions made for things they didn’t tell us about; like limiting the applications you’re allowed before you’re thrown off the system.”

All types of banks — urban and rural, large and small — were having issues. 
“Today has been very disappointing – especially to the small businesses themselves – because banks nationwide are experiencing major problems with the SBA system,” he said. 


"Banks of all sizes are having huge access problems and that has created intense frustrations and anger among banks attempting to process the loans, but the focus needs to be on the small businesses that are not being well served," Amanda Averch, a spokeswoman with the Colorado Bankers Association, said in an email to Denver Business Journal. "CBA is upset over the access and communications problems."
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