Covid-19 and the Paycheck Protection Program have fundamentally changed the banking industry.

In just a few months, lenders were forced to learn how to process a year’s worth of loans in six weeks. Numerated worked with lenders to process nearly a quarter of a million PPP loans on our platform. We had a front-row seat to how the pandemic transformed lending and drove a technological reckoning (which we shared with Bank Director).

We’ve identified a number of strategies, perspectives and traits that contributed to lenders’ success during the crisis. Working with banks to shift their focus to a post-PPP world, we’re seeing how incorporating these key learnings from the program will separate the winners from the losers going forward.

As banks and credit unions pivot to the new normal, the most successful lenders will be those who accomplish these four things:

Successful lenders will lean in on digital. It goes without saying that in the middle of a pandemic, every bank needed to figure out how to serve customers with closed branches. Digital capabilities were put to the test – everyone quickly figured out where their digital footprint fell short. A lot of sensitive documents were emailed, workflow was lost and most processes wouldn’t have passed audits in normal times. Digitally-mature lenders and those who successfully adopted technology for PPP had efficient, secure processes that didn’t burn out their customers or employees. Technology will be key to keeping customers satisfied and employees happy during inevitable future crises or unexpected shifts in the industry.

Successful lenders will prioritize speed to market. When Congress first announced the PPP, lenders had to make a quick decision: lean in and figure out how to help their businesses or sit it out. One of the biggest differences in PPP performance we’ve identified was how quickly lenders got into the market.

Two client banks in California both did the same number of PPP loans – despite one being 10 times larger than the other. The smaller bank identified their needs, adopted our platform and rapidly rolled it out to their borrowers faster than their larger counterpart. This gave the smaller bank a foot up in the market. Some banks think committees and consensus mean they can’t move quickly. In 2021, successful banks will understand speed matters, crisis or not.

Successful lenders will achieve efficiency ratios not previously thought possible. The workflow on Small Business Administration loans is complicated; despite the SBA’s best efforts, this was true for PPP as well. The best lenders leveraged technology to get PPP loans done the same day as applications. They pre-filled applications, automated decisions, automatically generated and digitally executed loan documents, and used APIs to board to the SBA. Loans that would have taken a banker five to six hours were done in less than an hour.

At the height of PPP, we saw lenders processing nearly two loans a second – the equivalent of $250 million of PPP loans per hour. Banks will need to find radical efficiencies like these to grow earnings in a challenging 2021 budget season. The most successful lenders are already using PPP learnings to reengineer their normal loan operations.

Using data is key. In 2021 and beyond, it will no longer be enough for lenders to digitize their processes. Going beyond these commonplace efficiency gains will require using reliable, actionable data that can automate and eliminate work. Unfortunately, as anyone who’s worked with financial technology knows, bank data is a mess.

During PPP, we worked with the SBA to create a connection to their systems that let us detect errors in our banks’ data. There were many, many errors; enabling our banks to fix these data issues saved countless hours of rework. Successful lenders are finding ways to clean their data so that software can automate more of their normal lending processes. These conversations are integral to their 2021 plans.

As the pandemic still grips the nation and without further government assistance in the immediate future, banks find themselves in uncharted waters as they set their budgets for the new year.

One of Numerated’s investors is Patriot Financial Partners’ Kirk Wycoff – one of the most successful community bank investors in the United States. In a recent Numerated webinar, he shared his perspective that this year’s budget conversations will be more focused on technology than ever before. “We need to get that message across to senior leadership teams that for investment in technology, there needs to be a realization that the building’s on fire.”

The ability to put out that fire effectively will determine much of lenders’ success in 2021 and beyond.

WRITTEN BY

Dan O’Malley

CEO & Co-founder

Dan O’Malley is the co-founder and CEO of Numerated, the digital LOS for business banking that dramatically reduces work for financial institutions and their customers by using data, and Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing fintech SaaS company.  Mr. O’Malley has a unique background in both banking and as an entrepreneur. 

 

Prior to founding Numerated, Mr. O’Malley was chief digital officer of Eastern Bank, the largest mutual bank in the U.S., where he led its fintech incubator and developed Numerated’s initial technology.  After growing Eastern’s portfolio 4X into the #1 business lender in Boston, he spun the technology out as an independent company in 2017.  Today, Numerated has processed over $50 billion in lending for more than 500,000 businesses across 130 institutions.