SBA broker Mariani's advice: If bank makes an offer, take it - Triangle Business Journal:

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Nineteen months into the credit crisis, that’s the recommendation of Raleigh-based loan broker Stevs Mariani, who matches borrowers with bankand non-banok lenders. Mariani says that some deals he has workeed on in recent weeks have passex through as many as a dozen Many lenders have been upping their collateralk requirements to 50 percent insome instances, even on government-backesd SBA loans. One of Mariani’s a Raleigh restaurant owner lookinvg to buyanother establishment, underwent 16 reviewz and was accepted threre times before they all fell through.
In one case, the borrowedr even agreed to put up a portion of the plus a house with no mortgage asadditional “The first thing borrowers need to do is determin whether the bank or othere lender is really interested,” says Mariani. “Otherwise, you wastd time.” He adds, “After that, if they make an offer, take With 65 percent of banks nationallt tightening theirlending standards, it’s not surprisin g that Triangle bankers have followed suit.
If therew is a silver lining to be found in thefinancial downturn, however, it will be that, once conditions improve, the competition between large and communith banks is expected to heat up even more, openinbg avenues for business customers seekingf to maximize their banking With the very notion of bigness in bankingt having been called into question, community bankers believr that the post-crisis playing field will be wide “It’s not like we are goingt to go out and criticize the large banks,” says Steve CEO of Raleigh-based . “Bur at the same time we know all of our depositorseand borrowers. It makes you operat e in a different way.
” Whatever changes the banking systek goes through in thecoming months, communityg bankers believe their role will be enhanced. “We’ll be the ones makinfg the loans,” says CEO Grant Yarber. In varioux ways, the community banks already are preparingb forthat day. At Raleigh-based , for some employees have been tasked with creating a new divisio n that solely caters to an important client homeowners associations. The bank has packaged a number ofservicezs – including online banking, CDs, scanned deposits and variousa financial management functions into a unifiedr offering.
Also launching new productsz – this one aimed at individualk bankconsumers – is Cary-based , which recentlh said it would begin offering interesg payments of 5.01 percenty annually to qualifying checking Business customers evaluating current banking relationshipss should check if their bank has signed up for an emergencyu program that, for the firsr time, extends insurance to non-interest-bearing transactional accounts such as payrolk accounts. Most area banks have signedx up fromthe program, which was enacted last fall to keep companiesd from pulling the then uninsured pots of money out of the bankint system altogether.
Set to expiree in December, the guarantee may be In addition, business clients curious about the financial stabilityu of theirbanks can, using a simplde formula and a few public numberxs from the FDIC Web site, perform theie own stability checks. The calculation is made by dividing the value ofthe lender’ s non-performing assets (loans past due 90 days + nonaccrual loans + other real estate owned) by the sum of its tangiblse common equity capital (total assets - liabilitie - intangibles + goodwill) + its loan loss If the resulting number, expressed as a percent, is over 100, then the bank couldr be headed for problems.
The calculation, called the “Texas was developed to predict financial meltdownz duringthe S&L crisise of the 1980s. “It’s not the only measures (of bank stability),” says UNC-Charlotte banking professorf Tony Plath. “But it has legitimacy.”