10 Must-Have Features of Commercial Lending Software

10 Dec 2024

15 min read

What should you look for in commercial lending software if your intent is to cover the full spectrum of your commercial lending operations?

In this blog, we answer this question – demand for commercial lending platforms is mushrooming as industry players acknowledge the need for a solution that achieves a full digital transformation of their commercial lending apparatus.

Such a platform should streamline documentation by digitization. It should inform credit decisioning with state-of-the-art credit models. It should mitigate risk and single out credit-worthy borrowers with automated data retrieval. And at the same time, it should make borrowers’ lives easier, with greatly reduced processing times, customizable underwriting, prompt refinancing, and more. Lenders must be able to serve more businesses, and borrowers should be able to spend more time on business rather than on convoluted, paper-heavy, and opaque processes to obtain loans.

Let’s dive into these features.

1. Digitized Customer Journeys and Reduced Touch-Times

When you digitize the process by which customers interact with your institution to seek and obtain loans, you eliminate paperwork, allow loan officers to work on problems that matter, and ultimately slash processing times. Loan operations are 20–30% more efficient when document collection is automated and borrowers face little to no difficulty using self-service options. This builds trust with your clients, whose business thrives with your support.

Finanta takes the paperwork out of the equation, supercharges document management, and allows you to track applications from start to finish and beyond. But most importantly – it is scalable – it evolves with the needs of your client businesses. When customers who trust you return for more financing, By design, Finanta handles varying loan volumes, anticipates regulatory concerns, and adjusts for market conditions and minimizes IT involvement.

Finanta handles varying loan volumes, anticipates regulatory concerns, and adjusts for market conditions and minimizes IT involvement.

Digitized customer journeys give financial institutions a high degree of autonomy and protect operational efficiency even when loan demand is high.

2. Document Management and Automation

Streamlining document management is essential for modern commercial lending, achieved through:

Secure Storage and Version Control: Centralized systems ensure secure storage with digital signatures and version control, safeguarding documents against loss or unauthorized access. This approach supports compliance and simplifies internal and external reviews. These systems are not just about security—they also enable seamless access to critical information, even for geographically distributed teams. Whether accessed by compliance officers, loan managers, or auditors, the centralized repository ensures that everyone works from the same reliable source. This minimizes confusion and prevents duplication of effort.

Automated Document Generation: Using pre-defined templates, lenders can automate the creation of loan documents, reducing manual input and ensuring consistency. This minimizes errors, accelerates preparation times, and allows lenders to focus staff on more important tasks. Automated generation also ensures that the final documents meet institutional and regulatory standards, removing the risk of non-compliance due to human errors of judgment.

Integration with Third-Party Tools: Integration with platforms like document management systems and e-signature tools enables seamless collaboration and borrower interactions. Borrowers can digitally review and sign documents, eliminating delays caused by physical handling. These third-party integrations also allow for scalability, adapting quickly to evolving borrower expectations or changes in market demand. With these tools in place, lenders can offer an efficient, end-to-end document experience that aligns with the fast-paced demands of modern commercial lending operations.

In sum, these tools empower lenders to meet the increasingly complex demands of modern lending while delivering tangible value to borrowers, who now track their paperwork in a paperless context.

Also Check: Urgent Need for a Commercial Lending Software

3. Enhanced Risk Models for Consistent Decision-Making

Traditional risk models are now severely compromised – customer expectations have changed, regulatory constraints are tighter than ever, and lenders now need to choose either to compete or collaborate with fintechs to insure against risk. But sophisticated, state-of-the-art risk models don’t just help you stay relevant, they can decrease exposure to non-performing loans by up to 25%.

Finanta’s advanced risk modeling capabilities empower lenders to navigate an increasingly complex financial landscape – the platform enables them to detect and curtail emerging risks early, ensure they can resist market fluctuations, and adjust their lending policies to build and expand a low-risk, high-value loan portfolio backed by data.

4. Transformed Credit Memo and Credit-Decisioning Processes

Streamlining the credit memo and decision-making process starts with establishing a ‘single source of truth.’ Lenders eliminate inefficiencies and inconsistencies that bog down the underwriting process by standardizing documentation and automating data retrieval. Directing all data required for credit decisioning into one accessible channel enables faster, more accurate decision-making. This not only accelerates the underwriting process but also reduces errors and cuts the ‘time to yes’ by up to 50%.

With automation taking over routine approvals, relationship managers are freed to focus their expertise on complex, high-value cases, deeper client engagement and driving business growth. But single-channel unification doesn’t just help a lender prioritize but also enhances compliance. This decision-making framework is faster, more reliable, advantageous to lenders and borrowers alike, and most critically – scalable.

Finanta’s intuitive interface provides relationship managers with the insights they need to make strategic recommendations, while automated workflows handle routine tasks with precision.

5. Automated Application Processing

Through automation, a modern lending platform like Finanta not only culls and captures relevant data from borrower documents, but assimilates such data to create a bird’s-eye view of the entire loan portfolio, curtailing risk and informing decisioning across the board. Finanta’s approach to automation transforms application processing into a seamless, efficient system. By digitizing every step, from document submission to credit decisioning, the platform ensures that no detail is overlooked. Borrowers experience faster processing times, while lenders gain the confidence of knowing that every decision is backed by reliable data and rigorous analysis.

6. Customizable Underwriting and Real-Time Compliance Monitoring

Today’s nprecedentedly strictu regulatory environment leaves lenders in a bind – they must balance compliance while trying to provide a personalized borrower-friendly loan process. To meet this dual demand, lending software must offer flexible, customizable underwriting workflows paired with robust, real-time compliance monitoring. Such solutions enable lenders to adapt underwriting parameters to changing market conditions, streamline decision-making across loan types to reduce compliance risks, and deliver tailored loan processes that align with borrower expectations. By automating compliance tasks like anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) checks and embedding them within the lending workflow, lenders not only avoid penalties but also build trust with regulators.

Also Check: Commercial Landing Process in the USA

7. Configurable Features for Business-Specific Needs

When a lender can surmount compliance concerns with a powerful commercial lending platform, they are ready to deliver truly bespoke experiences. Every financial institution has unique requirements – and configurability is key to addressing these needs. Finanta’s platform allows lenders to put borrowers first – giving them experiences they value. Our borrower portal confers three critical benefits:

Accessibility: Borrowers struggle with rigid lending processes. Finanta’s multi-channel portal is readily accessible and facilitates a painless lending journey.

Transparency: Few lenders can build trust if their borrowers lack the information to fulfill their loan obligations. Our portal updates loan status in real time and provides timely alerts, arming borrowers with all the facts they need to know.

Personalization: Generic, one-size-fits-all approaches are rapidly becoming obsolete. We leverage data to personalize terms and lender-borrower interactions, offering terms that accord with the borrower’s financial narrative.

8. Management of Loan Modifications, Extensions, and Refinancing

Commercial lending is hardly a one-time process of loan disbursement followed by scheduled repayments. The flexibility you offer when a borrower applies for loans must ideally evolve into a fruitful relationship with adjustable loan terms and informed, data-backed extensions. Prompt refinancing is especially important when it does not require the same scrutiny that initial loan applications typically necessitate. The easiest way to achieve this adaptability is through a platform like Finanta:

Digital credit representation facilitates painless repayment terms for borrowers

Adaptive loan lifecycle adjustments allow you to respond dynamically to change, managing modifications and renewals with finesse and nuance rather than with a heavy hand.

A strong communication framework cements the bond between lender and borrower, where both are always aware of their obligations to each other.

In depth financial oversight creates an adaptable framework for dynamic loan adjustments across the portfolio.

Lenders stay competitive, borrowers remain satisfied, and both are protected from mishaps down the line.

Also Check:Commercial Landing Challenges in the USA

9. Advanced Reporting and Monitoring Tools

Data capture and data assimilation can only go so far – while it does transform your loan operations, reporting and monitoring tools are essentially to sustain the digital transformation. Platforms such as Finanta help you track performance, risk and profitability consistently:

Customized reporting helps you tailor reports to specific business needs, benefiting your operations and borrower satisfaction.

Advanced analytics and visualization allow you to see data in context, and identify trends and patterns that refine decision-making

Detailed tracking and reporting on non-performing loans gives you all you need to anticipate risk and fulfill unforgiving regulatory standards.

10. API-Based Architecture for Seamless Integration

If you are already convinced you need a best-in-class commercial lending platform – what next? Integration.

Modern API-based architectures are indispensable because they help fintech solutions integrate seamlessly and securely with lender tech stacks without ruinous down-times and implementation costs. But they don’t just save money – they drive profits too. Once lenders transform legacy systems with such architectures, they can then focus with renewed vigor on products and instruments that boost revenue.

This is how Finanta is able to adapt to lender infrastructures and their specific business needs, creating a cohesive lending solution. Plug-and-play isn’t just convenient or painless, it fuels growth at scale.

Conclusion

A sophisticated commercial lending platform is the need of the hour, and a truly powerful solution is far greater than the sum of its parts. The features we have listed – the virtues of Finanta’s platform – constantly undergo a rigorous process of refinement. The platform doesn’t just digitize, automate or integrate, but adds up to a digital transformation that gives lenders the power to pursue sustained growth through strong relationships with borrowers.

Talk to our experts to revolutionize your commercial lending operations.

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