Could an institution receive Serivce Credit for helping small businesses throught the applicaion process with the SBA??

If you provide some training on small business issues, assistance with financials, etc. you could. Similar to helping not for profits with grant proposals, which are by nature financial.

Helping them through the process of the application or filling out the applicaion for them would not work?

Very interesting point. If it could work, I'd love for our bank to earn service credit. Thanks for mentioning it.

Here's my situation - We're an approved SBA Lender. So if as part of the application process, we take the time to educate our small business borrowers about the SBA application process and assist with preparing their financials, we could earn Service Credit? I'm just not sure how the regulators will view it. I'm just thinking that it would count as part of our job as a lender. Thanks for your help.

I have seen this work when some training was included - which you could easily incorporate in your "helping" and hand holding, not necessarily training classes for groups (although banks do that too). Prepare materials so that you can provide to the customer and show to regulators showing how you helped them through the process, educated them on getting their financials in order for this process, all things you are probably doing now.

Explain why the application needs to be filled out a certain way, what information they need, how to respond to questions...you are doing that and it is training.

Thanks so much, Kathleen! It's all about documentation, isn't it? ;-)