Human-centered commercial lending software: A win-win

A transformed commercial lending experience can foster great lender-borrower relationships.

Losing track of loan origination progress is easy when it’s hidden inside emails and spreadsheets. Lenders and borrowers alike experience the frustration of not knowing what comes next or retracing steps.

Organizations often turn to software solutions that focus more on back-office administrative tasks. But these solutions are often over-engineered, and they can create more problems than they address, such as:

Ignoring the most important touchpoints where the lender interacts with the customer
Requiring large volumes of manual data entry
Introducing rigid workflows that micromanage process steps
Forcing process overhauls that disrupt business

Our relationship-first digital commercial lending solution can eliminate inefficiency.

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Make origination more collaborative and efficient.

From lenders to underwriters, commercial loan origination is a team effort. But every email asking for updates and every task left unseen can add to frustrations and slow progress.

What if, instead, commercial lenders could shift from focusing on the end result to improving the experiences for everyone involved?

By connecting each step in the commercial loan process, lenders aren’t changing the way people work – they’re changing how people work together. When lending teams collaborate more effectively, their successes can translate to positive customer experiences, too.

Give your commercial lending teams the right tools.

Lenders and borrowers want the commercial lending process to be simpler. So why do so many tools make it more complicated?

A relationship-first digital tool for commercial lending can keep teams moving in the right direction by facilitating shared documentation and collaboration and providing status updates, workflow steps, and timelines for everyone to see. With the addition of automated notifications, lending team members can know when it’s their turn to act.

Get started quickly with flexible templates.

Predefined workflow templates can take the standard parts of the process and lending policy and streamline them for lenders and borrowers. Such templates can help lending team members of any skill level know what they need to do to move a loan through the process.

For example, the lending team might have a predefined template for commercial real estate loans above $250K. This template would include standard information requirements that lenders request from borrowers. It would also list action items and designate roles for the lending team, such as assigning a property valuation to appraisal manager.

If 80% of a loan process can be standardized, the remaining 20% can thrive with a human touch. Lenders can adjust templates depending on the uniqueness of the loan request or if some of the required borrower information is already on file. With the right commercial lending software platform, this fine-tuning doesn’t need an IT specialist or a vendor to add new templates or modify existing ones. The lending team itself is empowered to create a better workflow.

Keep lending teams informed.

Team members shouldn’t have to dig through spreadsheets and emails to find out if they have a job to do. With clear status updates, action item assignments, and notifications throughout loan origination, identifying the next step is simple.

Team members can act faster when important information is at their fingertips, including:

Defined role assignments and expected dates of completion
Borrower information such as recently submitted tax returns and personal financial statements
Specific records of ongoing communication across lending team members

Share the benefits with your borrowers.

Once lenders have the tools to collaborate, communicate, and get the up-to-date information they need, they can share the transparency improvements with customers through a customer portal.

Lenders can set expectations, communicate borrower-specific action items, and deliver an up-to-date status of the loan request as it becomes available. The fog lifts on the commercial lending borrower experience, and borrowers can know they’re finally standing on solid ground with a clear path forward.

Let customers choose how they participate in the process.

Lenders can tell customers what’s required but still let them decide how to complete the tasks. Many borrowers want to interact with their lender differently, but this doesn’t mean lenders need a new process for each customer.

Instead, by providing a secure online portal, lenders can allow interactions that funnel into the same place. Customers who use the online portal can have the same seamless experience with submitting financial statements as customers who bring paper copies to their loan officers.

Anticipate customer needs and have solutions at the ready.

With a detailed and centralized view of each borrower at their fingertips, lending teams can meet customers’ existing needs and anticipate what they might need next.

For example, some borrowers might only need their line of credit renewed annually, while others have more frequent requests that can require quick turnarounds. Lenders can get a clear view of such patterns and engage with borrowers more effectively.

Attend our webinar on better commercial lending experiences.

Let’s explore a human-centered approach to commercial lending that can streamline the critical jobs your team needs to get done.

View webinar part 1 View webinar part 2

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Take a human-centered approach to the lending process.

Commercial lending is a team effort, and putting people at the center of the process improves the experience for both lenders and borrowers. With the right tools enabling transparency and efficiency, your lenders can get back to what they love doing – helping people and making your community a better place. Crowe commercial lending specialists can help make it happen.

We can help you improve your commercial lending process.

We built Crowe CX for Commercial Lending based on insights from lenders and borrowers. Reach out to our commercial lending transformation specialists to walk through a live demo.

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Michael Budinger

Principal, Financial Services Consulting

+1 216 623 7517

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Cullen Hunter

Financial Services Consulting

+1 616 752 4268

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