Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI), a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services, today reaffirmed its commitment to small business lending with the announcement of up to $10 million worth of financing to two small business clients. New York City-based Ash NYC and Farmington, Michigan-located Digital Terrain selected Pitney Bowes Financial Services to augment their primary source of capital and deliver affordable revolving lines of credit and term loans.

By Suzanne Konstance, Boaz Salik, and Archita Bhandari

The effects of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis are being felt in almost every financial sector. While current CARES Act stimulus programs offer strong government support for lending through these programs, these are a short-term opportunity. Overall, institutions that lend money are incurring increasingly higher levels of risk. The most obvious concern surrounds borrower default and lenders are facing the challenge of maximizing recovery on their existing portfolio as default rates are increasing and will continue to increase significantly in the near future. The spike in unemployment recalls how the Great Recession of 2008-09 caused a wave of bankruptcy cases, and it’s nearly certain that we will see an uptick in business and consumer bankruptcy filings. As a result, we see several large lenders continue to increase their credit loss reserves. There are ways to increase recoveries, however, and one is to systematically file UCCs on a portfolio as early as possible.