Opportunity

An innovative Northeastern regional bank realized it was time to make significant changes to its business lending process in order to keep pace with online FinTech lenders like Kabbage and OnDeck. The bank had well-established customers going to online lenders for rapid business loans, and it seemed well worth the effort to try and originate those loans in-house and at the pace their customers demanded.

Approach

An APG consultant was engaged to facilitate the process of designing, developing, and deploying a new Fast Track Business Loan product and supporting technologies. The engagement began with the APG consultant understanding the objectives the bank hoped to achieve. Armed with that information, the consultant assembled a team comprised of designers, analysts, architects, and developers to bring the concept to life.

Several fast-paced and engaging workshops commenced, where the consultant rapidly prototyped the user experience of the Fast Track website and online application live, before the eyes of the bank’s stakeholders. Many stakeholders later commented that they had never seen anyone prototype so quickly and live, during the workshop, and felt that it was a competitive advantage to prototype the concept and ensure consensus on the requirements before code was written.

Upon completion of the prototype and associated requirements and architecture documentation, development commenced. Leveraging Salesforce CRM and Q2 Cloud Lending, the solution was deployed to production in just eight weeks.

Outcomes

The result of this investment is that the bank has a highly automated decisioning workflow and can provide a decision within 24 hours for loans up to $250,000. The bank has significantly increased its business lending and is retaining business that would have otherwise been lost to FinTech lenders.