New Canaan lender BNC Financial Group says it is getting $11 million from a new federal small business lending program to repay funds its two southern Connecticut banks borrowed from the Treasury’s Capital Purchase Program.
BNC, parent of The Bank of New Canaan and The Bank of Fairfield, said Monday that it is the first Connecticut financial institution to qualify for funds from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Small Business Lending Fund.
The SBLF is a $30 billion program that aims to spur small business lending by providing capital to qualified community banks with assets under $10 billion.
BNC said it will use the funds to repay the $5 million the bank borrowed from Treasury’s Capital Purchase Program — TARP as it was more commonly known — which was part of the wide ranging programs the federal government instituted to try to unfreeze credit markets during the peak of the financial crisis.
BNC will use the remaining funds for small business loans, the company said.
