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Paycheck Protection Program; Apply for a Loan with Guaranty Bank & Trust

By: Rachel Norton
| Published 05/27/2020

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THE WOODLANDS, TX – “The intent of the payment protection plan was to help businesses keep their employees paid, keep them off the unemployment line, and assist small businesses through these economic uncertain times,” said Guaranty Bank & Trust’s Conroe Market President Nick Davis.

The Paycheck Protection Program was signed into law through The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, March 27 of this year. After distributing 349 billion dollars during phase one, Congress ‘refilled the bucket’ with 310 billion dollars for phase two. Roughly 100 billion dollars or so still remains.

“At this point in time it’s difficult to say when the phase two money will expire so I’m encouraging small business owners to fill out the application and get all the supporting documentation to the bank as quickly as they can,” Davis said.

The loan itself is calculated based off of a business’ average monthly payroll number, the employer’s portion of retirement and health care benefits that they pay on behalf of their employees, along with any state unemployment tax that the business pays. All of these expenses are added together then multiplied by 2.5 to come up with the loan amount.

What constitutes payroll? It’s the gross salary of all W2 employees. Each employee through that process is capped at an annual salary of 100 thousand dollars. The U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) stated that contract labor individuals can apply for a PPP loan themselves.

The unique thing about this loan is that it has the potential to be forgiven. The SBA has yet to release complete details as to the process of this forgiveness, but they have provided guidelines for how the money must be used.

Once a business receives the loan, they have eight weeks to disperse the funds. They must use 75 percent or more for payroll costs alone, and an allowance of 25 percent can be spent on eligible expenses such as rent, utilities, or the interest portion of debt acquired prior to February 15.

“If they’re using the money along those guidelines… and they’ve been able to maintain the level of staffing that they had prior to the COVID-19 impact, the theory is that these loan funds should be forgivable,” Davis said.

He continued to say that at this point in time, if Guaranty Bank & Trust receives a complete application in the morning, along with all of the supporting documents needed to process it, they should hopefully have an authorization number that afternoon.

“You’re ultimately dealing with the individuals who are actually doing the work,” Davis said. “As opposed to submitting something to an online portal and no human hand is ever touching your file or calling you back … here at a small community bank we are actually handling and processing these files, punching in the numbers so to speak, and going out and physically getting the authorization ourselves.”

This quick turnaround time is not the only benefit of becoming a customer at Guaranty Bank & Trust. The bank has been Texas-based for the last 107 year. Their roots are focused on continued involvement within the communities they serve.

“We see our customers at the grocery store, we see them at church on Sunday, we see them at little league baseball games … It’s important to us to have relationships with the people that we do business with,” Davis said. Additionally, when customers open checking accounts, savings accounts, and deposit their money with Guaranty Bank & Trust, that money is ultimately being put back into our community.

“Our customers have the knowledge of knowing that their deposit accounts are not being shipped off to another state or benefiting some other areas,” Davis said. “That money is being reinvested directly back into our community through loans to people, for their car loans, their home loans, as well as their business loans, and also local charitable organizations.”

Guaranty Bank & Trust is currently processing Payment Protection Program applications for non-clients on a referral basis as well. Click here to fill out an application, or visit their website for further information.

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