NAFCU Journal May June 2021

All in on PPP Skelly describes the initial PPP team as an impromptu group of branch managers and staff from other departments that had some experience with personal loans who were willing to learn as they went. “We had employees working at 4 a.m. because they could get into the portal to upload applications at that time,” he says. The definition of “bankers’ hours” changed for every credit union employee working on PPP loans, admits Kathleen Metz, vice president of lending for Affinity Federal Credit Union. “Because our employees were working from home, many would set their alarms to wake in the early hours to upload applications at 2 a.m.” There was no need to publicize PPP loans. In fact, Affinity had 1,000 applicants express interest in the loans between the Thursday evening and Friday morning that the program went live, says Metz. “We used email blasts to contact each applicant to let them know each time their application moved to the next step of the process and we also called every person,” she says. “We had all 12 people in our commercial lending department, our chief financial officer, the human resources department and front-line bankers contacting applicants—at one point 30 to 40 percent of our employees were working on PPP.” This was possible because only drive-through windows were open and branch lobbies were closed except for appointments. “This freed other employees to help with PPP’s initial crunch,” she adds. “There was a lot of desperation through- out the first round of PPP, but as we moved into the next round of monies available, there was less anxiety,” says Metz. In the first round, Affinity handled 1,057 loans for a total of $57 million. “Our The demand for PPP loans gave us a way to start offering a new service to help members who were not receiving help from their other financial institutions. JON SKELLY, VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING FOR TRUE SKY CREDIT UNION 16 THE NAFCU JOURNAL May–June 2021