Cross River Bank does not share many of the same qualities as some of the nation’s largest banks since they only have one branch and a few billion in assets; but the firm proved to be the little engine that could by churning out more than 100,000 PPP loans to small businesses; only three banks doled out more loans, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo; “This is in our DNA,” said Gilles Gade, Cross River’s Founder and CEO, to the New York Times. “It’s exactly what we were built for.”; the bank has spent more than a decade building a practice that catered to fintechs looking to compete in the digital banking and online lending worlds; the average PPP loan is about $111,000, but Cross River’s are much smaller: $44,062 on average, by far the lowest of the program’s 15 largest lenders; the bank relied in part on partners like Gusto which processes payrolls for more than 100,000 SMBs; servicing the loans is a task unto itself, this is where the fintech Scratch stepped in and Gade is cautiously optimistic the partnership will go smoothly; Cross River has proven that technology can close the gap and more importantly help to save those that needed saving the most; “Every loan we send out, we’re saving businesses,” Gade said. “We’re saving paychecks — we’re saving lives. That’s really the way we look at it.” New York Times.
