SEPTEMBER 3, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY RICHARD NEWMAN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Stewardship Financial Corp. of Midland Park is the latest northern New Jersey bank to raise millions of dollars from investors to repay capital provided by the U.S. government to spur lending after the most recent recession.
The parent of 30-year-old Atlantic Stewardship Bank said late Friday that it raised $16.6 million to replace $15 million in funding received in 2011 from the U.S. Treasury through the Small Business Lending Fund, which was part of the Small Business Jobs Act signed into law by President Obama in September 2010.
The program gave banks with less than $10 billion in assets an incentive to make loans to businesses with less than $50 million in annual sales. The more loans they made, the less they had to pay to the government in dividends. The kinds of loans that qualify include commercial and industrial loans and owner-occupied commercial real estate loans.
Many banks, including Atlantic Stewardship, used the money to replace the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. The participating banks have been making quarterly dividend payments to the Treasury at an annual rate of as low as 1 percent or as high as 5 percent of the amount of the government’s investment, depending on the amount of small-business loans the banks make.
As of March 31, the total increase in small-business lending since the program began amounted to $16.4 billion, according to a Treasury survey of participants.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/stewardship-financial-repaying-u-s-1.1403175
