How Financial Institutions Can Meet the Marketplace Lending Challenge

What makes a bank a bank? When it comes to the commercial lending space, in a world of seemingly commoditized products and services, the true differentiation is defined by how a bank decides who they will lend to and who they won’t. It’s each individual bank’s unique credit policy that, however subtly, makes one bank different from another. All banks use many of the same metrics and scoring data to determine credit quality, and there is generally no secret sauce that one bank has and the rest don’t. Instead, it is often the nuances within those metrics and the interpretation and prioritization of the data that makes one bank different from another—and potentially, enables a business owner to get capital from one bank and not from the other.

Banks have spent a long time fine tuning their credit policies to match their risk appetite and even the history and culture of the bank. Their risk profile is integral to who they are. It is integrated into their brand, their mission statements and their core values. The bank’s credit policy is exclusive to that bank and helps define it as a lender.

Enter the fintech revolution, which has spawned a long list of marketplace lenders that have disrupted the business lending universe by essentially disregarding credit policies that took banks and credit unions decades to develop. Marketplace lenders like Lending Club, OnDeck and Kabbage are telling the business borrowing universe that they have a better solution than financial institutions when it comes to measuring a borrower’s credit worthiness.

Banks and credit unions are being driven to offer an online business lending solution by the need to improve the customer experience, increase customer acquisition and raise their profitability, while at the same time decreasing costs, streamlining workflow and reducing end-to-end time. As marketplace lenders aggressively court the business borrower, financial institutions need to do something in the online space just to remain competitive!

To replicate the technology that the disruptors have created would cost banks millions of dollars and years of development time and energy. The great news is, with innovation and evolution there is always the exploitation of every niche and iteration of a solution or model resulting in alternative means to attain the same outcomes.

There is a technological revolution within the fintech phenomenon that is being created by businesses that have the vision and mission to work with banks—not against them. Companies are hitting the marketplace with technology-only solutions that help banks help their business customers succeed. These “disruptors of the disruptors” are essentially selling financial institutions the technology needed to deliver loans easier, faster and more profitably, without forcing them to give up their credit policies, risk profile, relationships or control over the customer experience.

Banks and credit unions need to find these partners, and find them quickly, because they represent a way for those institutions to accelerate their entry into the online business lending space. Choose a partner that best meets your needs. Are you looking for an online application only, or an application and decisioning technology? Or, are you looking for an end-to-end solution that provides an omni-channel experience from application, through underwriting, docs and due diligence and even closing and funding? The type of partner you select depends on what’s driving your financial institution, whether that be increasing profitability, new customer acquisition, streamlining workflow, reducing end to end time or simply creating an enhanced customer experience for the businesses you serve. Explore all your options!