Lawsuits filed on behalf of small business owners against some of the largest banks accuses them of unfairly allocating government-backed loans to certain small businesses.
In four nearly identical cases, Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and U.S. Bank have been accused of prioritizing businesses requesting larger loans over other small businesses in order to generate bigger loan origination fees.
The prioritization resulted in nearly $6 billion in processing fees. The lawsuits all cited information from the small business association between April 3 and April 13.
“If the banks had approved loans on a first-come, first-serve basis, “the percentage change of applications submitted in the last three days of the program would be consistent among all application types,” the lawsuits read.”