Leader Bank Massachusetts Ave, Arlington

SmartBiz Loans and their affiliate, Leader Bank of Arlington, Massachusetts discriminated against our minority, woman-owned company. Since 2013, we have always paid higher than average wages plus health benefits to about 20 valued employees. We started our PPP application in Jan 2021 with Kabbage who had processed our 1st PPP efficiently and timely. For some reason, Kabbage transferred our 2nd PPP application to SmartBiz. SmartBiz fumbled through our application from March 2021 until the May 31, 2021 deadline. On June 2, SmartBiz emailed and said our application had been assigned an SBA PLP number meaning the loan was approved, SBA had funds set aside for our loan and we would be funded in about 20 days. After 20 days we then received an email from Leader Bank on behalf of SmartBiz saying the loan was denied because of an "incomplete application". I emailed SmartBiz, called and spoke with a Leader Bank rep but no one was willing to tell us why the application was suddenly incomplete or what we could do to make corrections. At that point the PPP program was closed so we had no recourse and ended up laying off most employees. The PPP would have really helped to keep our lease up to date and pay our employees while business has slowed due to the pandemic.

Excellent 10 star Service as usual.

Excellent support and guidance by Marcus Sohn and Ben Hartnett at every step of the way.