Good morning everyone my name is Jason I am the founder of Distressed Loan Advisors. I give advice on SBA loan related issues including the SBA Offer in Compromise, and for EIDL Loans. I do case evaluations (schedule here) for all loan types.
(Note: as of March 2023, EIDL loans are NOT eligible for Offer in Compromise. I encourage borrowers to Tweet @SBA, @SBAIsabel, and your congressional representative with hashtag #OIC4EIDL).
Today, I want to give a quick update I did a YouTube short on this topic but I think the notes are hard to find so I also did a regular video and that won’t limit me to 60 seconds.
So the update for EIDL loans as of March 2023 is this the SBA has launched a new servicing portal (find it HERE) and it’s got a couple of key features that are different than the prior what they call the CAFS account.
With the new portal, they’re basically integrating functionality so you don’t have to go outside of that existing portal to contact them or to make a payment.
The first big change is historically through the CAFS account they would redirect you to like pay.gov to make a one-time payment. Now from within the MySBA Loan portal you can make a one-time payment through that portal which makes it a little bit more convenient than having to pay.gov.
Note: if you’re already set up on pay.gov for a recurring payment you don’t need to do anything that payment will continue to be made.
The other update is as far as communicating with the SBA, previously they had email addresses that you would have to email them at if you couldn’t reach them by phone.
Within this portal now they have messaging capabilities, so rather than emailing several email addresses because you don’t know who to email, you can just contact them directly through that portal and that’s how they will handle communications.
The SBA did note that if you’re already communicating via email or you’ve sent emails and you’re waiting on a response you don’t need to also contact them through the new portal.
I think what they’re trying to do is is cut down on the number of people who are emailing you know several different email addresses because they don’t know who to email. I don’t think it’s the borrower’s fault, I think it’s you know just confusion, and the people at the SBA are a little bit overwhelmed and backed up and so they’re trying to find out a way to streamline it. I think contacting them directly through the portal makes a lot of sense all in one spot so that way you don’t miss an email.
Of note, if you previously had a CAFS account, that login information I’m being told the CAFS login credentials should (should being the operative word. It is the government, after all) work with the new SBA loan portal.
If you never had a CAFS you can just create an account to access all of your loan information, so it should be able to give you you know all the pertinent information that you would expect to see in a loan portal like loan balance, interest rate, payment history, and stuff like that.
So that’s it that’s the update. I know this article is is a little bit shorter but I wanted to give an update in case it’s helpful to some of you.
If you have questions about your SBA EIDL loan (or any other type of SBA loan) I do 30 minute case evaluations, I also have a free audio course, and a premium audio course.