The Agenda
How small-business issues are shaping politics and policy.
Maria Contreras-Sweet, the woman chosen by President Obama to lead the Small Business Administration, has a long and varied résumé: corporate executive, public servant, ambassador for a host of causes.
According to Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, “if there were still a Committee of 25” — a well-known group of rich, white, Protestant men said to have ruled Los Angeles County — then Ms. Contreras-Sweet, a Mexican immigrant, might “very well be on it — she’s that visible.”
But for many small-business owners and their advocates, one entry on this résumé is sure to stand out: in 2006, she helped organize what is now called ProAmérica Bank in Los Angeles, and she remains its chairwoman.
“ProAmérica was formed for the purpose of serving the Latino business community,” said L. Bruce Mills Jr., the bank’s president and chief executive. “It’s not a retail bank at all.” All of the bank’s customers, he said, are small to medium-size entrepreneurs, with sales ranging from $1 million to $20 million.
ProAmérica is a small bank, with just $123 million in deposits and a loan portfolio of $108 million. By assets, it ranks 3,779th out of 6,900 American banks, or just below the middle, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. ProAmérica’s lending profile is very similar to those of other California banks its size. Real estate loans constitute about 81 percent of its portfolio, and what the F.D.I.C. classifies as small-business loans — those under $1 million — make up 15 percent.
But Mr. Mills said the government figures were misleading because the bank often makes a business loan using the real estate as collateral, which the government tallies as a real estate loan. By the bank’s own accounting, some 30 percent of its loans are business loans, and they average about $500,000. About 62 percent of the bank’s lending has been to Latinos, Mr. Mills said.
In absolute terms, the bank is not a big participant in the S.B.A. loan guarantee programs that Ms. Contreras-Sweet will soon oversee, assuming she is confirmed. During the government’s 2013 fiscal year, according to Bob Coleman, who collects S.B.A. industry data for banks, ProAmérica issued nine loans totaling $2.7 million in the S.B.A.’s flagship general business program, known as the 7(a) loan program. The bank issued five loans, amounting to $4.1 million, through the S.B.A.’s 504 loan program, which is geared toward real estate and capital investment.
Mr. Mills, however, said that in the context of the bank’s portfolio, S.B.A. lending played a significant role, representing about 22 percent of its loan transactions. And in a column on his website, Mr. Coleman said that the bank had turned in “a very respectable performance” in managing its 7(a) loans — it has had to write off just four of 57 such loans issued since it opened. “Quality is better than quantity,” Mr. Coleman wrote.
(The S.B.A. declined to provide any information about ProAmérica’s participation in the agency’s loan programs. The White House said it would not make Ms. Contreras-Sweet available for an interview before she was confirmed, and she did not respond to email sent to her address at the bank.)
Indeed, ProAmérica appears to be generally well-managed, said Jon Winick, chief executive of Clark Street Capital, a consulting firm to banks, who examined ProAmérica’s financials at The Agenda’s request.
“It appears they’ve significantly improved the bank’s asset quality in the last year,” Mr. Winick said. “Their asset quality is materially better than their peers.
“This is a very typical community bank – solid, good asset quality,” he said. “It’s not particularly remarkable, and that’s a good thing in banking.”
Ms. Contreras-Sweet is also familiar with the S.B.A.’s counseling programs. At her insistence, ProAmérica Bank has teamed up with the small business development center at Santa Monica College, which is partly financed by the S.B.A. A loan officer at the bank teaches at the center’s workshops for entrepreneurs a few times a year, said Michelle King, who served as the center’s director until 2012, and the bank sponsored workshops for its own clients several times. In both 2011 and 2012, Ms. King said, the bank contributed $5,000 to the small business development center’s budget.
“It’s a hard thing to do to raise matching funds for entrepreneurship,” said Patricia Ramos, dean of work force and economic development at Santa Monica College. Ms. Contreras-Sweet, she said, has “continued to give back.”
“I think her influence crossed multiple communities,” Ms. Ramos said. “She’s a great listener, she’s compassionate, she cares about the issues that matter to California.”
Outside small-business circles, Ms. Contreras-Sweet is probably best known for serving five years as secretary of California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, appointed by Gov. Gray Davis in 1999. The 14 departments in the agency totaled 45,000 employees and represented $12 billion of the state budget at the time she left in 2003. By contrast, in 2013 the S.B.A. had about 3,300 employees and a budget of about $1 billion.
Doug Jeffe, a veteran lobbyist who dealt with Ms. Contreras-Sweet when she served in government, noted that all of the departments at the agency had their own directors appointed by the governor. Ms. Contreras-Sweet’s role as cabinet secretary appeared to be “primarily as an ambassador,” said Mr. Jeffe, who is Ms. Bebitch Jeffe’s husband. “It wasn’t really so much a management position. It was kind of a roadshow salesperson for the governor’s economic development policy.”
That is not too different from the job of S.B.A. administrator, and Mr. Mills, the ProAmérica chief executive, said he expected Ms. Contreras-Sweet to do it well. “When she’s in front a crowd, she can really wow them,” he said. “And that’s the role, garnering support for the S.B.A. and its programs and small businesses.”
Others in the banking industry said her experience at ProAmérica should not be discounted. “It’s been frustrating that there hasn’t been an S.B.A. administrator with banking experience for a very long time that I can recall,” Mr. Winick at Clark Street Capital said. “Getting somebody who has real-world banking experience and real-world S.B.A. experience is a big change for the agency.”