Small Business Administration announces it will disclose the names of PPP borrowers who accessed more than $150,000 in major reversal

• The Small Business Administration said Friday that it will disclose the names of PPP borrowers for loans larger than $150,000.
• Specific loan amounts won't be disclosed, but company information will be provided in groups broken out based on loan size ranges.
• Only 14% of PPP borrowers accessed loans above $150,000 but they account for nearly 75% of loans issued through the program.
• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had previously expressed concerns about disclosing specific loan data due to privacy.

The Small Business Administration will disclose the names of borrowers that received PPP loans for more than $150,000. The decision was announced Friday amid pressure from the Senate Small Business Committee to increase transparency into the $670 billion federal program.

The SBA says it will disclose company names, addresses, business type, demographic data, number of jobs supported, and other details. But specific loan amounts per company won't be disclosed. Instead, the SBA will break out the borrowers based on loan amount ranges, the lowest being $150,000-$300,000 and highest being $5-$10 million.

The decision comes after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had previously expressed concerns about disclosing specific loan data due to privacy given PPP loan amounts are based on historical payroll information.

The SBA did not say when the data will be released.

While only 14% of PPP borrowers accessed loans above $150,000, they account for nearly 75% of total loans issued, according to data released by the SBA.

"We are striking the appropriate balance of providing public transparency, while protecting the payroll and personal income information of small businesses, sole proprietors, and independent contractors," Mnuchin said in a statement.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who serves as chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee supported the decision.

"The American people deserve to know how effective the PPP was in protecting our nation's small businesses and the tens of millions of Americans they employ. That is the standard by which we must measure the success of the PPP: how many paychecks were protected," Rubio said in a statement on Friday.

Acknowledging business owners' concerns around disclosing proprietary information, Rubio said the agreement "strikes a balance between those concerns and the need for transparency."

The PPP program has undergone a number of changes since its initial roll-out in April. In order to secure loan forgiveness, borrowers now have 24 weeks to spend the money (originally 8 weeks), and 60% must go toward payroll, down from the initial 75% requirement.