SBA lender targets area with office

FORT COLLINS – First Commercial Capital, the Texas-based Small Business Administration lender that has consistently gained in the number and

volume of loans made in Colorado, is making a run at an underserved rural market.

“The Money Store and banks tend to sit in the comfortable I-25 corridor – it’s hard to go wrong there,” loan officer Tony Kavanagh said. “We’ll go to

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Craig, we’ll go to Wray, We’ll go to Joe. We’ll go to areas that are probably not serviced as well as they should be … the bank’s not worried that

they’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

Kavanagh opened First Commercial Capital’s Fort Collins office in April. He will service loans in Laramie, Cheyenne, Fort Collins, Greeley,

Loveland and points beyond, from Utah east to the Kansas border.

First Commercial Capital is owned by the Seguin, Texas-based First Commercial Bank. In 1995, First Commercial Capital’s Colorado operations,

located in Englewood, made almost $15 million in SBA-guaranteed loans to 47 businesses.

In comparison, Sacramento-based The Money Store Investment Corp., operating from its Fort Collins office,. made $7.5 million in SBA-guaranteed

loans to 19 businesses along the Northern Front Range alone. Statewide, The Money Store made 102 loans, totaling about $35.6 million.

Though Kavanagh expects First Commercial to be competitive in rural areas, where local banks might not be well-capitalized enough to make business

loans, he said he hopes to lure customers in that comfortable I-25 corridor by waiving some SBA fees for especially strong applicants.

“We can price and compete with the banks on real strong deals, whereas I don’t think other people are going to be as aggressive,” Kavanagh said.

Further, he said, First Commercial will consider every loan, in spite of the fact that “SBA is a paperwork nightmare.

“We’ve got it down to a science, so we look at every deal.”

Because First Commercial’s deals are reviewed by “some good ol’ boys sitting around a table,” Kavanagh expects to be able to go out a bit further on

the limb than other lenders beholden to out-of-state loan review committees can, especially for those square-peg requests that sound good to the SBA,

but don’t fit conventional guidelines.

Tom Wilczysnski, who staffs The Money Store’s Fort Collins office, said there’s enough Northern Colorado business for both lenders.

“One thing that happens when competitive SBA lenders come into the market is tht the business community itself gets a real education on SBA

financing and its availability to them,” he said, adding that local banks haven’t emphasized SBA financing.