As visitors disappeared from Hawaii’s beaches in late March and job losses reached historic highs, local employers worried they wouldn’t get their share of federal Paycheck Protection Program loans.
“We were paranoid,” said Rich Wacker, president of the American Savings Bank in Honolulu. The money to help with payroll and other bills was first-come, first-serve, and Hawaiians feared big mainland banks could get all the money first.
“We knew we had to rely on ourselves, so it was all-hands-on-deck to make sure we didn’t get shut out,” said Wacker.
With no branches of the so-called Big 4 banks (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) in Hawaii, local banks had teams of employees waiting to punch in applications when the loan system went live around 2 a.m. on April 3, said Neal Okabayashi, director of the Hawaii Bankers Association.
“Some banks were working 24-7 and moving people from their normal jobs to making PPP loans. Anybody who could keypunch, from auditing or risk management or even human resources,” said Okabayashi. “Finally, after the first five or six days, they said you could take Sunday off.”