SBA makes changes, progress

The U.S. Small Business Administration reported it was overwhelmed in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane season, but has since quadrupled its processing abilities, increased its disaster staff by 3,000 and reduced its backlog by 90 percent.

The SBA has re-engineered its Disaster Assistance program, focusing on customer service, direct accountability and new technologies designed to quadruple processing capacity.

The SBA is also in the process of completing its Disaster Recovery Plan, which includes procedures to better handle future catastrophic disasters. It has begun testing its new plan through simulations conducted by outside experts.

The SBA lists some of the specific changes it has made since the catastrophic 2005 season, where it was flooded with over 420,000 loan applications and approved nearly two times the dollar amount of the next largest disaster in its history.

The agency’s Disaster Credit Management System has been improved to handle 8,000 simultaneous users.

The agency can now draw from a pool of 3,000 experienced individuals to staff to quickly staff up its disaster offices. Nine hundred of these individuals signed up as reservists and are committed to reporting within 48 hours notice.

And a policy change now allows the SBA to incorporate non-disaster staff during the kind of surge scenario seen in the wake of Katrina.

The agency also boasts it has made its loan disbursement process quicker and easier.

Now, each borrower has a case manager to help ensure work is done correctly the first time, while giving borrowers a hopefully more responsive experience.

The agency also reported it moved 1,300 staff and changed its entire loan disbursement process work flow from a production line to a system of 15-person integrated teams, where each function of the process is represented with authority and competency to make decisions, ensure accountability and manage for better results.

The agency believes the changes have allowed it to reduce its backlog by over 90 percent or from two and a half months to less than ten days.

And of the 160,000 applicants with approved loans from the 2005 hurricane season along the Gulf Coast, 99 percent have now either received all or some of their loan money or simple chose not to proceed with their loans.

So, of the $6.9 billion in approved loans requested by borrowers, $5.1 billion has been fully disbursed in the Gulf with a $500 million being partially disbursed.

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