On Thursday, members of the Government Employees’ Retirement System board convened to give updates on their personal loan program. The program, which was dissolved in 2015, was reinstated earlier this year and appears to be moving as planned.
GERS Administrator Angel Dawson Jr. opened by giving updates on the status of personal loans already underway at GERS.
“This report is as of the end of April, at which point we had 755 active loans — 427 on St. Thomas-St. John and 328 on St. Croix. And mortgages, we had 71 all together, with 52 on St. Thomas-St. John and 19 on St. Croix,” said Dawson.
The overall loan portfolio as of the end of April for GERS in St. Thomas-St. John was $4.6 million and $2.93 million in St. Croix. Of the loan portfolio, personal loans constituted $2.9 million ($1.6 million in St. Thomas-St. John and $1.3 million in St. Croix), according to Dawson.
The administrator added that on April 8, GERS allowed for an “expressions of interest” period from April 9 to April 19 regarding the reinstatement of the personal loan program. The agency received 1,563 expressions of interest; however, 197 were removed due to issues such as duplicate names, age limits, and contribution ineligibilities. Two applications were even removed due to applicants not being members.
“As of May 29, we have processed completely 628 of the 1,366 eligible individuals that have expressed interest. That was a total of $6,187,190. That would represent some 31 percent of the $20 million dollars that has been allocated by this board for the loan program,” said Dawson.
He also added that, on average, applicants have been qualifying for the maximum $10,000 loan amount.
Thus far, of the 688 approved applicants, 240 are for the St. Thomas-St. John district, totaling $2,308,470, while 388 are for the St. Croix district, totaling $3,878,720.
“I would point out just from an economic standpoint in terms of the value of this loan program, the $6.2 million that we’ve dispersed thus far, if you considered that there’s generally an economic multiplier of three, that would represent some almost $19 million in economic activity for the territory, assuming that most of the monies remain within the V.I. economy,” said Dawson. He added that, “Should we continue at a rate of $10,000 per loan, we believe that we would have $6.5 million remaining and in July the program can be reopened to utilize the remaining funds.”
These numbers are confusing, Adisha. How can the numbers for April be $7.53 million, yet the “as of May 29 processed completely” number is only $6,187,190?