How Much Did PNC Make From Pandemic Relief?

I. $607 million, modeled, and no figure from the bank

Most lenders never said what the PPP paid them, so the answer has to be modeled, as it was for Womply's fees. PNC is one of them. Its filings explain how it booked the fees and never say how much they were.

Question	Figure	Source	Kind
What did the SBA owe PNC on its 2020 loans?	$392.0 million on 73,911 loans	SBA loan-level data, priced loan by loan	modeled
What did the SBA owe PNC on its 2021 loans?	$214.8 million on 45,441 loans	SBA loan-level data, priced loan by loan	modeled
What did PNC say it had earned?	"less than $26 million in revenue" recognized through May 31, 2020; no total since	PNC letter to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, June 29, 2020	company letter
How much did PNC give away?	no pledge found	PNC filings, 2020 to 2022; Forbes Advisor, July 10, 2020	company filings; press
What did the SBA owe BBVA USA, which PNC bought in 2021?	$142.2 million on 30,657 loans, nearly all owed before the purchase	SBA loan-level data, priced loan by loan	modeled

The two PNC years add to $606.8 million, the tenth-largest fee total among the 4,688 lenders in the SBA file (PPP lenders by estimated fees). By dollars lent, PNC ranks third, with $17.3 billion (lender page). The series ranking of fee collectors adds agents and contractors and ranks each on its fees after documented payments to agents. There PNC is seventh, behind Womply (ranked on its billings and covered in its own piece), JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Blueacorn, Cross River Bank and Wells Fargo. The figure is fees owed, before the cost of the "more than 4,000 PNC employees" the bank says worked on PPP applications and loans. It leaves out the 1 percent interest the loans paid while they were outstanding.

The SBA file agrees with the bank's own counts. It shows 73,911 PNC loans for $13.0 billion approved in 2020; PNC's 2021 proxy statement reported "funding more than 70,000 PPP loans in 2020 worth approximately $13 billion." For 2021 the file shows 45,441 loans for $4.33 billion; the SBA's own report through May 31, 2021 listed PNC Bank with 45,454 loans and $4.32 billion (SBA PPP report, May 31, 2021).

II. Who paid PNC, and for what

The SBA paid the lender of record a processing fee on every PPP loan and guaranteed the loan in full. For 2020 loans the fee was 5 percent of loans up to $350,000, 3 percent up to $2 million and 1 percent above that (85 FR 20811). For 2021 loans of $50,000 or less, the fee became the lesser of 50 percent of the loan or $2,500 (86 FR 3692; 86 FR 3712).

Say a Pittsburgh bakery borrowed $20,000 from PNC in May 2020. The SBA paid PNC $1,000. A manufacturer that borrowed $5 million the same week earned PNC $50,000: one-fifth the rate, on 250 times the money.

PNC made big loans. Its PPP loans averaged $145,130, against about $94,700 at JPMorgan Chase, $70,100 at Bank of America and $49,080 at Wells Fargo (PPP per-lender totals). A schedule that paid the lowest rates on the largest loans brought PNC 3.5 cents in modeled fees per dollar lent. On the same model JPMorgan's book came to 4.1 cents, Bank of America's to 4.3 and Wells Fargo's to 5.0. Among the 15 largest PPP lenders by dollars, only KeyBank came out lower. Prestamos CDFI lent $6.9 billion, about 40 percent of PNC's total, and its modeled fees came to $1.06 billion.

The split by size shows where the money came from:

PNC loans by size	Loans	Share of loans	Modeled fees	Share of fees
$50,000 or less	70,362	59.0%	$115.0M	19.0%
$50,000 to $350,000	39,404	33.0%	$246.9M	40.7%
$350,000 to $2 million	8,292	6.9%	$192.3M	31.7%
$2 million and up	1,294	1.1%	$52.7M	8.7%

The 2021 rule raised the rate on small loans. PNC's 2020 loans paid about $5,300 each, 3.0 cents per dollar. Its 2021 loans paid about $4,730 each, 5.0 cents per dollar, and the 2021 first-draw loans, most of them small, paid 8.1 cents (fee schedules by vintage).

III. What PNC said the fees were worth

PNC's quarterly reports describe the accounting in one sentence: "The processing fee received for loans originated under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is deferred and accreted into Net interest income using the effective yield method, over the contractual life of the loan" (Form 10-Q, June 30, 2020). So the fee reached earnings as interest income, a slice at a time. "If the loan is repaid or forgiven, then the deferred revenue is accelerated," PNC told Congress in June 2020. None of the ten annual and quarterly reports from 2020 through 2022 that we read gives the amount.

Congress asked. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis wrote to PNC and seven other lenders on June 15, 2020 (Underserved and Unprotected, p. 1). PNC answered on June 29 over the signature of Lakhbir Lamba, its head of retail lending. "As of May 31, 2020, PNC had recognized less than $26 million in revenue on the approximately $12.6 billion in PPP loans it had registered through that date," the letter said, and "PNC's estimated after-tax profit from its participation in PPP is less than $10 million." Both numbers measure what the accounting rule had released by May 31. On the model, the SBA owed PNC $392.0 million for its 2020 loans.

The bank's earnings calls, as transcribed by The Motley Fool, filled in some of the rest. On July 15, 2020, a UBS analyst said the fees came to "hundreds of millions of dollars here in revenue that will be collected over the next three -- or recognized, sorry, over the next three quarters." Rob Reilly, the chief financial officer, answered: "Yes. I think that's right." In an earlier exchange on the same call, chief executive Bill Demchak had said: "we also have all the PPP fees showing up."

Later calls gave quarterly pieces:

Call	What PNC said	Covers
Jan. 15, 2021	first-quarter 2021 PPP net interest income "will be approximately $140 million," about $30 million of it from forgiveness of $2 billion of 2020 loans	forecast
Oct. 15, 2021	third-quarter 2021 "net interest income contribution from PPP was about a $100 million"	reported
Jan. 18, 2022	expected "a decline of approximately $75 million in PPP-related interest income" in the first quarter of 2022	forecast
Apr. 14, 2022	first-quarter results reflected "a $74 million decline in PPP revenue due to loan forgiveness activity"	reported

These are net interest income, so they include the 1 percent interest, and from June 2021 they include BBVA USA's loans. No call we read gave a total.

We found no PNC pledge to give its PPP fees away. Forbes Advisor's July 2020 roundup of the largest lenders quoted JPMorgan Chase: "We will not make a profit from the program." It quoted a Bank of America spokesperson: the bank would use "the net proceeds of fees from the Paycheck Protection Program" to support small businesses and communities. It reported that Wells Fargo would give away nearly $400 million in fees. Its PNC entry quoted a May 1 statement instead: PNC "has committed more than $45 million to eight community development financial institutions (CDFIs) since March 2020 to support their own origination of PPP loans in potentially underserved geographies and sectors." The statement does not say whether the $45 million was lent, invested or given.

IV. BBVA USA: $142 million under another lender's name

On June 1, 2021, PNC bought BBVA USA Bancshares for $11.5 billion in cash, adding more than 600 branches in Texas, Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Colorado and New Mexico (Form 10-Q, June 30, 2021). BBVA USA had made PPP loans of its own: $3.1 billion of them sat on its books at June 30, 2020 (BBVA USA Bancshares, Form 10-Q). A year later, PNC reported $11.6 billion of PPP loans outstanding, "which included $2.1 billion from BBVA."

In the SBA's loan file those loans carry a different name. The file lists 30,657 loans for $4.09 billion, approved from April 4, 2020 to June 30, 2021, under originating-lender location 760, named "First Source Federal Credit Union" of Rome, N.Y., and serviced by PNC. Of their borrowers, 30,243 (98.7 percent) are in BBVA's seven states, 16,084 of them in Texas. First Source Federal Credit Union, of New Hartford, N.Y., appears under its own location number with 207 loans. From those counts we infer that location 760 is BBVA USA's PPP book under the wrong name. The file does not say how the label arose.

Priced the same way, the book comes to $102.1 million on 22,555 loans approved in 2020 and $40.1 million on 8,102 approved in 2021, a total of $142.2 million. All but two of those loans, for $2.05 million, were approved before PNC owned the bank, so the fees on them were owed to BBVA USA. PNC bought the company, including whatever fee income was still deferred on the $2.1 billion outstanding; no PNC or BBVA filing we read gives that amount. Added to PNC's own $606.8 million, BBVA's book would make $749.0 million, more than Wells Fargo's modeled $690.1 million.

BBVA USA had its own queue suit. In April 2020, Zamora-Orduna Realty Group LLC v. BBVA USA, a putative class action in the District Court of Bexar County, Texas, alleged that the bank "tortiously failed to process certain loan requests submitted in connection with the federal Paycheck Protection Program" and sought "not less than $10 million" (BBVA USA 10-Q, June 30, 2020). BBVA's report for the first quarter of 2021 said: "The court recently entered an order granting the Company's motion to dismiss with prejudice. Appellate options for the plaintiffs currently exist."

V. The queue: $8.8 billion in the first two weeks

PNC took applications only from businesses that already had "a Business checking, deposit or lending relationship with PNC," which it attributed to its anti-money-laundering obligations and to the volume it expected from existing customers. It opened an online portal on April 4, 2020, the day after the program began (June 29 letter). The House staff report found that "PNC and Truist permitted only existing customers with business banking accounts to apply for PPP" (Underserved and Unprotected, October 2020).

The first round ran out of money on April 16. By then the SBA had approved 20,562 PNC loans that are still in its loan file, for $8.84 billion. That is 68 percent of PNC's 2020 dollars and $221.7 million, 57 percent, of its modeled 2020 fees. JPMorgan Chase had 25,993 loans approved, for $12.0 billion, and Bank of America 9,056, for $3.6 billion (SBA loan-level data, our count).

The round-one loans ran large. PNC had 73.9 percent of its 2020 loans between $350,000 and $2 million approved by April 16, and 88.4 percent of those of $2 million or more. Of its loans of $50,000 or less, 14.7 percent. Program-wide, the round-one shares for those two groups, $350,000 to $2 million and $50,000 or less, were 69.4 percent and 21.4 percent; at JPMorgan, 47.4 percent and 3.8 percent.

The subcommittee got PNC's own processing times, as of July 31, 2020 (Underserved and Unprotected, pp. 14–15):

PNC loans	Average days from application to funding
Over $5 million	11.0
Over $1 million to $5 million	14.6
Over $100,000 to $1 million	22.4
$100,000 and under	26.8
Corporate and Institutional Banking clients	15.0
Retail clients	27.0

The subcommittee described the two lines from a PNC briefing: "PNC's Retail Bank managed the majority of its loan applications, while its Corporate and Institutional banking arm served the bank's largest customers and provided relationship managers." PNC's letter had said: "Simply put, we did not have a 'two track' system that was designed to prioritize applications from larger eligible businesses over those of smaller eligible businesses."

PNC gave reasons in its letter for slower files. Applications missing information "necessarily took longer to process." Sole proprietors and independent contractors could not apply until April 10, when PNC "had already received tens of thousands of applications." When the program reopened on April 27, the SBA's E*Tran system "almost immediately went down," and the SBA limited how many applications a lender could submit each hour. PNC sent "tens of thousands" in a bulk file, which the SBA confirmed on May 1.

A borrower sued. On April 23, 2020, Lincoln Network, Inc. v. PNC Financial Services Group was filed in the Northern District of California. The complaint alleged that PNC "favored their own interests by prioritizing larger loan applications for bigger businesses and PNC's own banking clients ahead of smaller businesses." Lincoln Network, a nonprofit and a PNC customer since 2017, said it had applied on April 3 for $253,516.48. On April 18, it said, PNC told it that the bank was "unable to complete the review and SBA registration process" before the money ran out. Lincoln Network dismissed its case without prejudice on May 18. No court ruled on how PNC ordered its queue. Borrower suits against other banks ended in arbitration or on the statute.

VI. The agents: four suits, no payment on record

The SBA's rule let a lender pay an agent who helped a borrower apply, out of the lender's own fee. The cap was 1 percent of loans up to $350,000, 0.5 percent up to $2 million and 0.25 percent above that (85 FR 20811). Accountants and consultants who had prepared applications sued lenders for those shares. By July 17, 2020, PNC said, it had been named in four such actions. In one of them it described the plaintiff's suit as "an effort to divert an unspecified sum of statutory PPP fees from PNC and 100 other unnamed lenders to unknown third parties" (motion to dismiss, Henning).

Case	Court	Filed	End
Bookmyer v. PNC Bank, N.A. (PNC with other lenders)	S.D. Ohio	May 5, 2020	plaintiffs' notice of voluntary dismissal, Jan. 5, 2021
Winner v. PNC Financial Services Group	N.D. Ill.	June 16, 2020	dismissed with prejudice on the parties' stipulation, Jan. 7, 2021
Denise M. Henning, CPA LLC v. PNC Financial Services Group	W.D. Pa.	June 17, 2020	voluntarily dismissed without prejudice, Oct. 7, 2020, after PNC's second motion to dismiss

The fourth action is not identified in PNC's brief. Plaintiffs also asked the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to combine the agent-fee cases nationwide. PNC opposed and proposed a PNC-only proceeding in the alternative. On August 5, 2020 the panel refused both, finding that "the policies and practices for paying agent fees are unique to each lender" (order denying transfer; MDL No. 2950). Courts that ruled on the question held that the CARES Act gave agents no claim without an agreement with the lender (The Agents Got Nothing).

We found no record of PNC paying an agent fee. Its June 2020 letter listed "the potential for lenders to be required to pay a portion of their SBA fees to borrower-retained agents" among the risks its revenue estimate did not reflect.

VII. What PNC said

"We participated in the PPP primarily because we knew the program was of vital importance in these difficult times to our small business customers and the communities that we serve, not out of financial considerations" (Lamba to the subcommittee, June 29, 2020). Sixteen days later, on the earnings call, Reilly described the fees: "So it's a real number. But in the context of our total NII for the year, it's not hugely material."

"Given the scope of the PPP program and the speed with which all participants have had to act, we are aware that the process has not been seamless" (Demchak, May 1, 2020). The same day, the SBA approved a $253,500 PNC loan to Lincoln Network, eight days after the nonprofit sued PNC.

Method, and what would change the numbers

Modeled fees. Each loan in the SBA's PPP loan-level file (release of September 30, 2024) is priced under the fee rule for its approval date and draw; loans are counted by approval year. The model assumes the SBA paid a fee on every loan in the file. Fees on loans later canceled or reduced may not have been paid in full, so the modeled figures are fees owed, not received. PNC's filings give no fee total to test the model against.

BBVA USA's book. The loans under originating-lender location 760 are priced the same way. Their attribution to BBVA USA is an inference from the servicer, the borrowers' states and BBVA's reported balances; no SBA document we found names the lender behind location 760.

Round-one counts. Loans approved from April 3 through April 16, 2020, by the SBA's approval date, among loans still in the September 2024 file. Loans canceled before then are not in the file, so these counts are a floor.

Company figures. Quoted from PNC's SEC filings for 2020 through 2022, BBVA USA Bancshares' filings for 2020 and 2021, PNC's June 29, 2020 letter to the House subcommittee, its May 1, 2020 release, and The Motley Fool's transcripts of five PNC earnings calls.

What is not public. PNC's PPP fee income by year; its cost of processing the loans; the deferred fee on BBVA USA's loans at the purchase; and any agent fees PNC paid.

Sources: SBA PPP loan-level data (Sept. 30, 2024), priced under 85 FR 20811, 86 FR 3692 and 86 FR 3712 (PNC lender page; PPP lenders by estimated fees; PPP per-lender totals; fee schedules by vintage); SBA PPP report, approvals through May 31, 2021; The PNC Financial Services Group, Forms 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, June 30 and Sept. 30, 2020, March 31, June 30 and Sept. 30, 2021 and March 31, 2022; Forms 10-K for 2020, 2021 and 2022; proxy statement filed March 16, 2021; BBVA USA Bancshares, Forms 10-Q for the quarters ended June 30, 2020 and March 31, 2021; Lakhbir Lamba, PNC, letter to Chairman James E. Clyburn, House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (June 29, 2020); Select Subcommittee staff report, Underserved and Unprotected (October 2020); PNC, "PNC Update On Paycheck Protection Program Support" (May 1, 2020); The Motley Fool, transcripts of PNC earnings calls of July 15, 2020, Jan. 15, 2021, Oct. 15, 2021, Jan. 18, 2022 and Apr. 14, 2022; Forbes Advisor, "Banks Made Billions On PPP Loans. Learn What They're Doing With The Cash" (July 10, 2020); Lincoln Network, Inc. v. PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., N.D. Cal. No. 3:20-cv-02824, Dkts. 1 and 14; Bookmyer v. PNC Bank, N.A., S.D. Ohio No. 2:20-cv-02284, Dkt. 1; Winner v. PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., N.D. Ill. No. 1:20-cv-03515, Dkts. 1 and 43; Denise M. Henning, CPA LLC v. The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., W.D. Pa. No. 2:20-cv-00905, Dkts. 1 and 12; In re Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Agent Fees Litigation, MDL No. 2950 (order denying transfer). Related: How Much Did Womply Make From Pandemic Relief?; The Agents Got Nothing