CIT Group, a leading provider of financing to small businesses and middle market companies, today announced that its Corporate Finance segment completed transactions that provided $1.2 billion in new loan commitments during the quarter ended September 30, 2011.

This is an increase of 9% over the second quarter. New funded volume for the quarter was $700 million, down slightly from $733 million sequentially, reflecting lower initial fundings on new asset-based revolvers.

“Our new business activity remained strong in what is typically a slower transactional period. We continued to see interest in asset based and cash flow lending among our small business and middle market clients, particularly in our Commercial & Industrial and Energy groups.”

Jim Hudak, President and Co-Head of Corporate Finance at CIT, said, “Our new business activity remained strong in what is typically a slower transactional period. We continued to see interest in asset based and cash flow lending among our small business and middle market clients, particularly in our Commercial & Industrial and Energy groups.”

Peter Connolly, President and Co-Head of Corporate Finance at CIT, added, ”We won more agency roles as clients sought out CIT’s deep middle market industry expertise. We were successful in increasing our CIT Bank originations as approximately 90% of our U.S. funded volume was done by the Bank this quarter.”