Article Key to Expanding Your Business

it’s a fact of life that banks can be unfair to small businesses. They seem more than willing to lend piles of money to corporations losing millions, yet profitable, successful small businesses are often turned away.

That may be changing, and one of the pioneers is Key Bank, one of the country’s largest financial services companies. They’ve teamed up with Costco, the “warehouse superstore”, to offer small business financing programs to Costco Executive Members. Many of our distributors already know Costco and use it as one of their wholesalers, as well as a great source of goods for the home and office. If there isn’t a Costco in your area, contact Key Bank or your local bank to see if there’s a program available for you.

Basically, the Costco/Key Bank programs offer a line of credit, and an installment loan. For qualifying businesses, it can mean up to $100,000 in expansion capital. Thousands of people have already been helped by this service; they’ve used the money to buy new equipment, expand their business, or cover seasonal costs.

Anyone who has been through a loan process knows that there are endless questions that don’t seem to apply to your business, because they’ve been designed for large companies. Key Bank focuses on “...streamlining the loan-application and approval process,” says Michael Butler, Key’s vice-chairman of small-business services. “We designed a program in which the upfront initial application was customized for small business, enabling us to get enough documentation so that when the loan was approved we wouldn’t have to put the customer through extra moves.”

Key Bank has also created a 24 hour, 7 day a week phone channel with loan information specifically tailored for small businesses. Often small business loans carry high rates of interest—as much as 19–20%, making them unrealistic for most entrepreneurs. Key’s rates are extremely competitive; on the business line of credit and the business installment loan, their rate is prime plus 1 percent.

This is not a commercial for Costco; although this may be the first time a national bank has teamed up with a national chain, there are other warehouse superstores that offer services for small business owners, such as business card and check printing, business payroll processing, and more.