Huntington National Bank: $6.6B in 2020 PPP Loans

Type: Bank; PPP lender of record
Legal entities: The Huntington National Bank; holding company Huntington Bancshares Incorporated
Headquarters: Columbus, Ohio

The Huntington National Bank is the only bank subsidiary of Huntington Bancshares, a Columbus-based regional holding company. SBA's loan-level file credits it with 83,184 PPP loans and $11.1 billion in approved dollars, tenth among all lenders by dollars.¹ Of those, 58,765 loans for $8.50 billion sit under Huntington's Columbus lender location and 24,419 for $2.60 billion under a Sioux Falls, South Dakota location in Huntington's name.² Huntington's own annual reports count $6.6 billion funded in 2020 and, after its June 2021 acquisition of TCF Financial, $11.4 billion originated by the two banks together.³⁴

The PPP book

The loans in the SBA file averaged $133,384 and went to 75,390 borrowers, who reported 1,240,508 jobs. Modeled loan by loan from SBA's published fee schedule, Huntington's processing fees come to $401.0 million: $263.9 million on 2020 first-draw loans, $19.4 million on 2021 first-draw loans and $117.7 million on 2021 second-draw loans, 18th of 4,688 originating lenders.¹ SBA never published what it paid each lender.

At the Columbus location the file shows 38,304 loans for $6.45 billion in 2020, then 5,715 first-draw loans ($204.7 million) and 14,746 second-draw loans ($1.84 billion) in 2021. Most borrowers were in Ohio (31,620) and Michigan (15,708). It shows 56,650 of those loans forgiven and 1,302, for $72.7 million, charged off.²

Huntington's 10-K for 2020 gives the bank's count: "we funded more than 38,000 loans in the amount of $6.6 billion through the SBA's PPP." At year-end $6.1 billion was still outstanding. SBA had paid Huntington $225 million in forgiveness by December 31 and another $1.2 billion between January 1 and February 19, 2021. By that February date the bank had processed about 16,000 applications worth $1.8 billion in the reopened program.³ PPP loans carried a zero risk weight for regulatory capital; the filing says that largely offset the effect of the year's balance-sheet growth on the bank's capital ratios.³

On June 9, 2021 Huntington closed its all-stock acquisition of TCF Financial Corporation of Detroit, valued at $7.2 billion. Its 10-K for 2021 reports that "$9.4 billion of the PPP loans have been forgiven by the SBA of the original $11.4 billion of PPP loans originated by both Huntington and TCF prior to acquisition," with $1.5 billion outstanding at December 31, 2021. By then Huntington operated 1,092 full-service branches and private client offices, primarily in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and seven other states.⁴

Senate letter and agents' suit

On April 23, 2020, Senate Small Business Committee Chairman Marco Rubio wrote to Huntington Bancshares and eleven other large banks asking whether they had taken PPP applications first-come, first-served or through filters that favored certain borrowers.⁵ Huntington Bancshares and The Huntington National Bank were defendants in David S. Lowry, CPA, Ltd.'s agent-fee class action in the Southern District of Ohio, No. 1:20-cv-00348, alongside Fifth Third, PNC and U.S. Bancorp.⁶ Both Huntington entities opposed centralizing the agent suits, and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation declined to centralize them on August 5, 2020.⁷

A forgiveness Huntington approved and SBA reversed

Continental Real Estate Companies applied through Huntington on April 17, 2020 for a PPP loan of $2,922,700, which the bank approved and disbursed in full six days later. In September 2021 Continental applied for forgiveness of $2,872,765.70.⁸ According to Continental's later complaint, Huntington approved the forgiveness. SBA's final loan review decision of December 10, 2022 found the company ineligible as a passive business, and SBA's Office of Hearings and Appeals denied its appeal on March 21, 2023 and its petition for reconsideration on April 14, 2023.⁸⁹ Continental then sued SBA in the Southern District of Ohio, arguing that the rule exceeded the agency's authority.⁹

In the fraud files

A grand jury in the Eastern District of Michigan charged in April 2026 that from 2020 to 2022 false PPP loan and forgiveness applications for three entities were submitted to Huntington, Community Choice Credit Union and SBA; the case charges money laundering, and the charges are allegations.¹⁰ In Seattle, a federal court ordered former physician Eric Shibley to pay $200,000 in restitution to "Huntington Bank" in a PPP fraud case, alongside $960,000 to Customers Bank and $278,000 to SBA.¹¹

Huntington National Bank

The PPP book

Senate letter and agents' suit

A forgiveness Huntington approved and SBA reversed

In the fraud files

Sources