Thirty-five Mississippi banks are set to receive $19 million
awarded through the state’s newly created FY2023 Bank Enterprise Award (BEA)
Program. Each bank will receive $451,025 to support lending and investment
activity in areas experiencing economic distress, especially rural areas.
The BEA Program grants were approved through the Treasury Department’s
Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund), according to a
recent announcement by Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s (R-Miss.) on her website.
“The BEA Program is important to Mississippi because it
provides another avenue to credit and loans that other financial institutions
wouldn’t necessarily offer to small businesses or start-ups in more rural or
distressed areas,” Hyde-Smith said. “These resources will be put to
work specifically to support job creation and retention in areas that need it
most.”
Hyde-Smith is a member of the Senate Community
Development Finance Caucus who has actively supported the BEA Program and CDFI
Fund. She recently joined Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) in introducing
the Supporting Community Lenders Act (S.2099), bipartisan legislation
to expand credit access to small business owners in underserved areas.
The CDFI Fund provides BEA Program awards to depository
institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which demonstrate
a commitment to increasing their CDFI investments or their own lending,
investing or service activities in distressed communities. Distressed areas, for
the purposes of the CDFI Fund, are defined as those where at least 30 percent
of residents have incomes below the national poverty level and where the
unemployment rate is at least 1.5 times the national unemployment rate.