Digital Lending Resources and Strategy

A modern digital lending solution for statement spreading is the foundation of building your digital lending process. Generate actionable insights from financial analysis to further develop your digital lending strategy. A holistic financial analysis tool allows you to deliver quick, consistent credit decisions with features like:

• Automated tax returns and financial statement processing.
• A dynamic credit memo that is populated with financial spreads and core data.
• Robust reports are generated to help you make sound credit decisions.

This core component of the Baker Hill NextGen® platform facilitates reporting, data collection, global cash flow, covenants, a comprehensive credit memorandum, and more—all in one central location. 

• Flexible formats. Baker Hill NextGen® Statement Spreading offers a wide range of formats and features to meet your financial analysis needs for commercial lending. Standard formats and specialized industry formats are built-in. Add covenants quickly and easily using templates without having to leave the application. 
• Commercial real estate insight. The flexible, dynamic structure of our financial spreading software gives underwriters and credit analysts the reporting options they need to make sound credit decisions. The customized chart of accounts is tailored to the real estate industry and features multiple levels of analysis for various types of borrowers and properties. Group properties based on ownership or other types of underwriting criteria. 
• Current, accurate comparative data. Baker Hill NextGen®'s statement analysis software offers a reliable source of comparative data. This financial spreading solution provides direct access to the complete database of the latest version of the RMA Annual Statement Studies® based on more than 150,000 financial statements in over 600 unique industries. It also permits the direct and immediate comparison of a subject company to the industry. 

"Online loan application" can mean different things to different people. For some, the thought of a business owner applying for a loan online seems too complex. For others, it means placing a document online for a customer to print and bring into a branch. However, you know that a true online loan application should integrate into your workflow and support your entire lending process from start to finish.

Today's clients expect digital services almost everywhere they do business - and the expectations are the same if not greater for their financial institution. If a client isn't able to conduct business in a way that's convenient for them, they are more likely to move their banking relationship.

Meet customer expectations by offering small business and consumer loan origination applications digitally with an application branded for your institution. The online loan application and portal from Baker Hill NextGen® creates a fully digital lending experience that can be tailored to your needs, allowing you higher engagement with your borrowers during the loan acquisition process.

Western Alliance Bank, which prides itself on serving businesses, uses Baker Hill’s loan origination solutions to help manage smaller business loan requests with greater efficiency and ultimately, enable loan officers to spend their time pursuing larger commercial deals.

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Commercial and small business loans pass through many hands throughout the lending process, but without the proper digital tools collaboration can be difficult. Understanding where every loan is in the approval process in real time enables your teams to work together more effectively and decision loans more efficiently.

Having one single source for granular visibility into your pipeline provides the data you need to identify bottlenecks in your lending workflow, project loan funding needs and timing, as well as forecast new loan bookings appropriately.

Our commercial loan origination system enables your institution to create the most efficient decisioning process with an optimized credit approval process that leverages workflow automation and business rules. Our single platform simplifies processes and improves efficiency. From start to finish, you can transform and manage the entire commercial lending process for commercial and mid-sized enterprises using Baker Hill’s solutions provide a framework to automate, integrate, and streamline all aspects of commercial lending.

With the right loan origination software, your bank can accomplish more together without the added cost of hiring and training employees.

An updated commercial loan origination solution will:

• Keep everyone in the loop. A cloud-based loan origination system will support a collaborative lending workflow across multiple devices, where even remote employees like commercial relationship officers that are onsite with customers can help push loan requests through.
• Increase employee bandwidth. Such a system will also give employees time to focus on tasks that positively impact your financial institution’s bottom line and serve customers better, whether with the computers on their desktop or with the supercomputers in their pockets. 

How do your lenders prospect for new business? How do you collect information on new prospects? What types of interactions are your employees having with prospects and clients? Being able to answer these questions is critical to effectively managing your lending pipeline and growing your business but bringing together the people and the process can be difficult.

A Client Relationship Management solution that is not just integrated but embedded in your loan origination software allows you to more effectively track and manage interactions. Since the relationships and the processes are managed in one place, this enables you to create accurate pipeline reports and grow your business while attracting and retaining your most valuable prospects and clientele.

Baker Hill NextGen® CRM integrates data into one simple tool to enhance the client experience and provide actionable insights. 

• Gain and retain business. Focus on the sales management stage of the relational cycle, addressing the need to attract and retain valuable clients. Each line of business, calling officer, and service team member will achieve individual performance targets. Our bank and loan origination CRM facilitates communication across the institution regarding client activity, goals, and opportunities. 
• Maximize client relationships. Capture and manage pertinent client and prospect information, including contacts, call activity and touch history, products and collateral, sales opportunities, client classification and segmentation, relationship groups, client-specific relationship plans, referrals, and correspondence groups. 
• Turn strong relationship management into healthy ROI. Baker Hill NextGen® CRM supports each stage of the relationship management process. It provides a quick-view interface with client value and risk; shares call activity management to any relationship manager; prioritizes opportunities by probability of close, stage, and anticipated close date; tracks sales opportunities types, amounts, and fees; and actively helps your team manage and improve the number and quality of referrals. 

As technology is evolving, so are consumer expectations - especially when it comes to transparency and communication. Keeping up with the expectations of your clients not only builds trust and loyalty, but allows you to more efficiently deliver on business objectives.

High engagement during the loan application creates high customer satisfaction. Leverage the power of a secure client portal to engage with, collaborate with, and update your customers so that they feel like a business partner with your institution, not just another number.

The Baker Hill NextGen® Client Portal is a solution that is accessible to both you and your customers so you can meet their desire for a convenient and simple communication process. 

• Make lending a two-way street. Seamlessly integrates with the Baker Hill NextGen® loan origination process platforms, creating the most efficient loan application in the industry. Dynamic technology with responsive design maximizes digital outreach to customers. 
• Loan status transparency. With Baker Hill NextGen® Client Portal, your customers can track their application from submission to loan closing. This transparency will help remove the stress your customers often feel during the loan application process.  
• Provide secure access to all relevant parties. Portal users can authorize collaboration amongst their key business partners, such as accountants, attorneys, and more.  

Choosing the right digital lending partner can be a daunting task with many things to consider. Every financial institution is different, but creating and executing a digital lending strategy is critical in order to stay competitive and win in today's enviornment.

Built on more than 35 years of innovation and experience serving community banks and credit unions, Baker Hill NextGen® has the digital lending tools community banks and credit unions need to drive loan growth, reduce risk and increase profitability. Our team of experts has helped financial institutions transform their lending processes with modern, digital loan origination solutions.

No matter where you are in the process, Baker Hill has the resources that can help you develop and implement your strategy for digital lending. If you're ready to learn how Baker Hill can partner with your institution to deliver a comprehensive digital lending experience, help you increase efficiency, and grow your loan portfolio, request a consultation with our team today.

Not quite ready for a consultation but want to see where your institution is in the race to digital digital lending maturity? You can take this quick assessment to find out if you're in the fast lane, on the right track, or still at the starting line when it comes to your digital lending strategy. After taking the assessment, you'll receive additional digital lending resources and information based on your results.

Additional Digital Lending Resources:

The Do’s and Don’ts of Digital Lending Transformation

In this article originally published in Bank Director, John Watts, SVP of Operations for Baker Hill writes "Bankers try to make the tech fit to their existing processes, rather than the other way around. If you’re already considering a digital transformation, you might be tempted to run out and overhaul your entire system right away. However, this can be an overwhelming approach, destining the project for failure. However, there are a few quick do’s and don’ts that can benefit every institution."

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Are Banks and Credit Unions Really Making the Most of Technology?

For many mid-size community banks and credit unions, the shift to technology has been slow. While the COVID-19 pandemic forced the hands of many smaller financial institutions, there is a mindset of resistance when it comes to implementing financial technology practices. This often hinders the results that the technology can provide, since bankers try to make the tech fit to their processes rather than the other way around. Learning new methods to do something you’ve done your entire career can be daunting, but the results for your customers and your institution are worth tackling the learning curve.

Managing Risk in Digital Lending

Risk comes in many forms: Operational, Credit, Regulatory, and Reputational. From origination to servicing these loans, there is one common theme: risk is everywhere. Technology partners, like a loan originations system, can help to manage that risk with a transformation from manual to digital.

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The Dichotomy of Commercial Banking

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” Charles Dickens once said about the United States Commercial Banking landscape or close to it. Although Dickens may have been referring to the societies of 19th century Europe, a similar dichotomy exists if you’re a commercial banker. Can digital lending tools help you in you commercial lending processes through good times and the bad?

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What We Learned in 2020: A New Digital Banking Strategy

The need to deliver a digital lending experience to a bank’s small business and commercial customers has been a rallying cry for several years. While the need has been there, the digital focus has been heavily centered on the consumer customer.

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Choosing the right loan origination system is an important decision. This additional resource guide will help you identify the right loan origination software to:

• Provide a cohesive strategy for your loan origination process
• Handle compliance and functionality requirements
• Increase efficiency, manage costs, and meet regulatory challenges
• Help you prepare for the changing loan marketplace and be ready to capitalize on opportunities for new loan business

View the Guide

Check out this webinar recording that features a panel of banking leaders from across the country discussing trends in digital lending transformation and how it has impacted their institution: