How Automation Can Improve Your Loan Application Process and Maximize Efficiency

Can automation improve your loan application process? Automation is one of the most important keys to success in today’s digital world. It is no longer just a best and a nice-to-have practice anymore, but it is mandatory if you want to remain viable and applicable.

Every financial institution competes with each other to transform from being partially or even fully analog to being fully digital. And the pace of transformation is increasing at an astonishing rate. They know this transformation can increase efficiency, decision speed, productivity and also enhance their customer experience.

So, if you’re part of the financial institutions and still haven’t automated your loan application process, you most likely will be left behind. But don’t worry, we’re here to help you.

In this article, we will outline the challenge of the traditional loan application process, which stage can be automated, and how the automation can eventually help you expedite the loan application process.

Slower Decision and Approval Will Affect Your Business

If you’re an officer who’s handling all the loan application documents, one of your biggest challenges is managing the volume of the loan applications and at the same time ensuring thorough evaluation of each application.

During this stage, you will need to carefully review and validate the information provided by the applicants, verify their supporting documentation, conduct credit checks, and assess their financial situation.

This process requires attention to detail and may involve contacting external parties, such as employers or credit bureaus for verification purposes. This mandatory process is crucial to ensure accuracy and minimize the risk of approving loans to individuals who may not have the capacity to repay.

So, if there is a high volume of loan applications or limited resources in terms of staff or technology, it can definitely slow down the whole process. Because, regardless of the volume, you still need to prioritize applications based on risk assessment and maintain a fair and consistent evaluation process to minimize potential risks.

This is where the technology comes in, to help you expedite the process with accuracy and efficiency. With our technology, you can automate the task and expedite the whole process. But before we go through that topic, let’s take a look at the overall process first.

What Are the Steps of the Loan Application Process?

The traditional loan application process typically involves several steps and may vary depending on the lender and the type of loan. With all the steps involved, documentation, credit checks, and so on, the approval process might be longer.

 

To understand the application process, here is a general overview of how it works:

Application: The first step is to fill out the loan application provided by the lender. This can be done in person at a bank or financial institution, online through their website, or by filling out a physical application form.

Documentation: Alongside the application, you will need to provide supporting documentation such as identification, proof of income, bank statements, tax returns, and any other relevant financial information requested by the lender. The specific documents required will depend on the type of loan and the lender’s policies.

Credit check: The lender will perform a credit check to assess your creditworthiness. They will review your credit history, credit score, and any outstanding debts to determine your ability to repay the loan.

Verification and evaluation: The lender will meticulously review all the information provided in your application and supporting documents. They may verify the information you’ve provided and assess your financial situation, employment stability, and any collateral you may have.

Approval or denial: Based on the evaluation, the lender will make a decision to approve or deny your loan application. This process can take varying amounts of time, depending on the lender. Some lenders can provide instant approvals, while others may take several days or weeks to review and decide. There are a lot of factors that may influence the timeline such as the complexity of the loan, the lender’s internal processes, and the volume of applicants received.

Loan terms and conditions: If your application is approved, the lender will provide you with a loan offer. This offer will outline all the specific terms and conditions of the loan, which includes the details of the loan amount, interest rate, repayment period, monthly installment, and any other relevant terms.

Acceptance and disbursal: If you agree to the loan terms, you will sign the loan agreement and return it to the lender. Afterward, the loan amount will be disbursed to you, either through a bank transfer, a check, or another agreed-upon method.

It’s important to note that the above steps are just a general overview of the traditional loan application process. So, by understanding the whole big process, you’ll definitely get the idea that some of the steps can be automated.

As an example, for the credit check, you can expedite the scoring process using automation. By leveraging algorithms and predefined criteria, the software can quickly analyze an applicant’s credit history, credit score, and financial data to determine their creditworthiness.

This automation can significantly reduce processing times, improve accuracy, enhance customer experience, and optimize resource allocation.

Interesting right? We will share with you more on this down below.

Let’s keep reading.

How Our Syndesis B2B Can Expedite the Loan Applications Process

SYNDESIS is an openly connected enterprise gateway with automated decision capability that’s making a way in the credit industry. It provides Product Managers with online real-time access and fast processing of customer credit data with insights.

It is a comprehensive B2B integration platform that helps financial institutions or businesses of all sizes automate and manage their B2B transactions with ease. Our software directly interfaces with the external credit bureau and lead information sources to retrieve online real-time credit reports.

Here is just the overview of the Syndesis B2B benefits:

• Faster turnaround time for loan approval/rejection
• Making more efficient loan origination decisions
• Increase efficiency in updating CCRIS for approved applications
• Reduce cost by eliminating duplicate reports retrieval or redundant submissions
• Reduce your operational costs
• Ensuring responsible lending
• Expand your customer base without increasing credit risks

Okay, let’s get back to the whole steps of the loan application process by referring to the image above. Usually, there will be two software that is involved in the overall process. The first is the loan originating system (LOS), and the second is the Syndesis B2B.

Loan originating system (LOS) is a software platform used by lenders to manage and automate the loan process starting from application submission to loan disbursal. It plays a crucial role in streamlining and facilitating the various stages of the loan application process.

The LOS allows for digital storage, management, and retrieval of applicant documents. It provides a centralized repository for all the required documentation to make it easier for loan officers to review and verify the documents during the application evaluation process.

Then the LOS needs to submit the data to the Central Bank through the provided gateway which is called the CCRIS B2B gateway. This is when the Syndesis B2B system is involved.

Based on the diagram above, the LOS system will submit data to Syndesis B2B (API) before it’s going to the CCRIS B2B gateway. Syndesis B2B then will extract relevant applicant loan information from the system database and structure it according to the specified CCRIS data format guidelines.

Then it will establish a secure connection with the CCRIS B2B gateway using secure communication protocols. This process will ensure that the data is transmitted over a secure channel to safeguard confidentiality. This can be done in just a few seconds.

The submission is important because it enables financial institutions and authorized parties to access accurate and up-to-date credit information when assessing an individual or business’s creditworthiness.

Save Cost and Generate More Sales with Syndesis B2B Solution

The best part about Syndesis B2B is the flexibility. It can be used with or without the loan originating system. If you already have your own system, it can be integrated with Syndesis using our comprehensive API suite which allows quick and easy integration.

By doing this, your interface and our API suite will always in communicating. So, all the sending requests such as blocks of data for new credit applications, principals’ approvals, or absolute credit decisions can be run smoothly.

All the self-serving digital journeys through your website, mobile apps, or kiosk also remain unchanged. This all can be integrated with Syndesis and allows your customer to continue on the journey driven by your data rules.

Syndesis B2B without the LOS

Okay, how about Syndesis B2B without the LOS? Can it fully function to expedite the process?

The answer is YES. Our Syndesis B2B solution comes with its own interfaces. This means that you can manually key in and use the system to complete the process. Below are some of the Syndesis features and benefits for your reference:

Syndesis Dashboard & App Tracer: It has the ability to trace the status of each application created and submitted via the system. Which is a better user experience and transparency that keep users aware of the application’s progress.

Syndesis Centralize Control System: The control system allows the IT system admin to wake up and turn off the Syndesis B2B components with one click instead of going through the massive process.

Credit Report Data Storage: Credit report data storage for further analysis and credit scoring. You can save costs by not retrieving the same report for the same customer within the validity period.

Flexible Scoring Rules: Flexible credit bureau scoring rule definitions enable automated approval and enhance the capabilities to produce risk scorecards.

Reporting: Reporting details for line management and portfolio review activities.

Other than the features that have been stated above, Syndesis also can provide financial institutions with the following capabilities:

• Straight-Through-Process credit report pulls from loan origination system for credit cards, unsecured personal loans, housing loans, mortgages, hire purchase, corporate lending, SME lending, etc
• Large volume pulls of credit report data for marketing campaigns.
• Significantly enhance the capability to produce rule based decisioning based on credit scoring and filtering and perform advanced analytics on portfolios.
• Allows you to create, edit and deploy decision engines in real-time without any coding.
• Instant creation of a new application with minimal effort of data entry and the ability to trace the status of each application created and submitted via the SYNDESIS system

Summing Up

In conclusion, using a traditional method of loan processing lead to manual data entry, more paperwork, and slower decision making. Manual data entry may be prone to errors, redundancy, and typist may make mistakes by entering the wrong details sometimes.

The manual paper-based workflows are also not reliable, lack accuracy, and take countless hours for processing. It is also challenging for the officers to handle the volume of loan applications and at the same time to ensure thorough evaluation.

This is why automation emerges as a promising solution to improve the whole process. By leveraging technology and automated systems, financial institutions can streamline various aspects of the process, leading to increased efficiency, reduced processing times, and enhanced customer experience.

As technology continues to advance, embracing automation becomes increasingly crucial in the lending industry to stay competitive and provide better financial services to the customer. If you’re interested to learn more about our product, feel free to contact us here.