How to Relieve the 3 Biggest Headaches for Commercial Lenders

There is no denying that commercial lending is a fast-paced business. Or rather, it should be. But in reality, the commercial loan approval process is slow, clunky, unsecure, and all-around inefficient—making your Small Business Administration (SBA) loan processing times far longer than they should be.

Most lenders experience the same painful processing headaches. Still, some solutions exist to improve the client experience while making the loan process more efficient for your employees—benefiting your organization, your staff, and maybe even your bottom line. 

Let's start by identifying some of the sources of frustration for lenders:

1. Poor security measures

Between February and April 2020, cyberattacks against banks increased by a staggering 238%. Users opened unknown email attachments and inadvertently download malware and other viruses into the organization’s devices and throughout the network. This allowed hackers to alter files and steal critical client financial information.

That had to hurt. 

2. Inefficient file management processes

Emails, folders, and spreadsheets can make managing inbound and outbound documents painful for any organization. Some commercial lenders rely on efficiently tracking loan application statuses; what starts as a time management and lender processing function quickly becomes an operational failure. In fact, 56% of bankers said manual document collection and subsequent client back-and-forth was the greatest challenge in initiating the SBA loan process. Something’s not working here.

3. Cumbersome tools for employees

The Great Resignation stifled businesses in the first half of 2022 as economies reacted to the fear of a recession. A commercial lender’s ability to succeed begins and ends with its employees. 

Right now, 38% of office workers cite email fatigue as a reason for leaving their current job. They’re frustrated with wasting time going through mountains of email threads to maybe find the file they need. Once the file is found, they might need to make it accessible to others in their organization, either write down where they stored it—not safe—or remember where; it’s not easy. All this just to check one task off their daily list—not great.

Clients expect good experiences 

Meeting client expectations and relationship-building is vital in the fast-paced, high-stakes commercial lending industry. You can win the trust of your clients by offering consistently good experiences, which can translate to continued success. 

Speaking of trust, if clients are worried that their information isn’t secure, they’ll get cold feet. If getting to the final signature takes a minute too long or three clicks too many, they’ll lose interest—customer satisfaction drops 15% when lenders take more than ten days to offer a final decision. Clients won't hesitate to take their business elsewhere if they don’t have complete and immediate approval transparency throughout the SBA loan process. Borrowers want to know the latest process information available digitally whenever and wherever. 

Inefficient document collection

Document collection and data management are the bedrock of modern business in the digital era. PDFs, Word docs, videos, you name it—commercial lenders must be able to track all these file types from clients and colleagues efficiently. 

Still, it’s tough for any organization to simplify the document collection process today. Clarity and efficiency are business 101 basics to increase productivity. It’s the execution that’s tricky—sending and receiving files over email isn’t secure, it isn’t efficient, and it’s a headache for everyone. 

Security and scalability with document collection tools 

There are automated tools that help commercial lenders handle all that time-consuming inbound and outbound document collection. These solutions eliminate emails containing dangerous malware from the equation. It speeds up the document location and approval processes to make your employees’ lives easier.

Using one automated document collection solution to solve all these problems might sound too good to be true, so let's talk numbers.

• Sixty-six percent of network and security professionals agree that automation reduces the risk of critical data breaches and regulatory compliance violations.
• Meanwhile, integrating automated document collection software with your organization’s digital infrastructure helps reduce critical document errors by 30%, saving 40% in document-related costs. 
• Crucially, 91% of employees say automation increases the free time and improves work-life balance by eliminating tedious tasks like sending follow-up emails and tracking incoming documents. 
• The bottom line is that 46% of IT leaders say that automation saves between 11% and 30% on manual loan processing costs. You can’t argue when money talks—an automated document collection tool is a must-have for your commercial lending organization.

When struggling to juggle documents across multiple sources, a document collection solution is an easy fix. These tools centralize client documents into a simple dashboard that anyone can use. Automated signature requests can be sent directly to clients, and received documents can be converted into accessible, editable PDFs that integrate with your organization's cloud storage.  

FileInvite’s document collection solution reduced turnaround times at an SBA loan processing marketplace from 42 to 15 days. The number of steps for processing emails was decreased by five times. That means a 35% productivity increase for commercial lenders with 80% less time sitting around and waiting for documents. 

To learn more and request a demo, visit FileInvite today.

Related posts:

• 3 Ways to Process SBA Loans Faster & Improve Customer Experience
• How to Remove the Friction Points in Your SBA Loan Approval Process
• 3 of the Most Informative KPIs for Commercial Lenders