Lending
10/02/2017

Are You Losing Business to Alternative Lenders?


lending-10-2-17.pngEvery relationship manager assumes that their clients would never go to another lender for a loan. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth, and the data proves it. Banks are starting to notice a trend in their existing client base. Their customers are receiving more and more outside financing from alternative lenders with each passing year. In some cases, this has grown by 55 percent a year since 2014. Small business owners are doing this for two main reasons: Applying for a loan online is fast and convenient, and it’s the path of least resistance to acquiring the money they need to help their business succeed.

Here are a few questions to determine whether your clients are moving to alt lenders:

  1. Does your bank avoid small business loans because they can’t do them profitably?
  2. Has your institution pin-pointed the number of online defectors in its own client base? Has your team dug deep into transaction records to see what percent of small-business customers are making regular payments to online lenders?

Be prepared to see some shocking numbers, which leads to the next question: How will you stop the exodus? Better customer service and product awareness? Sure, letting your existing customers know you provide small business lending services is a great start but one thing alternative lenders have that most financial institutions don’t is a well-designed, quick and easy, self-service online application.

When financial institutions dig deeper into their own customer data, they begin to see that even the most credit worthy clients with highly successful businesses and great credit scores are using alternative lenders. They might need money quickly and know traditional banks take several weeks to process a paper loan application. Or they simply might not have the time to go to a bank during regular business hours and instead prefer (and are willing to pay more for) the convenience and flexibility provided by alternative lenders that offer a 24/7 omni-channel-accessible application.

Providing a better experience for your clients is becoming a must. This includes having an application available to clients at any time on any device. And the technology has to accommodate every client’s and prospect’s preference, providing the option to complete the application on their own, or sit down with their banker to complete the application together. The improvement in the customer experience “lift” from technology also needs to go beyond the application, to include streamlining and speeding up all aspects of the end-to-end lending process, from decisioning to closing.

Building technology into the lending process will stop your customers from looking elsewhere. However, the benefits of such a partnership don’t just stop with the customer experience enhancements. Banks using a technology-based, end-to-end lending platform will see a significant reduction in the cost-per-loan-booked, enabling the institution to make even the smallest loans more profitable. Banker productivity and engagement also are positively impacted by technology. With the right partner, front office bankers are freed up from the responsibilities of shepherding loans through the process and instead can focus on acquiring new relationships, or expanding current ones. Back office bankers spend minutes analyzing each deal instead of hours, enabling them to focus on deeper inspection into larger deals, or diving into a “second look” process to try to turn “declines” into “approvals”.

Technology, when leveraged appropriately, enhances the relationship between banker and client, enabling the banker to provide more value and deliver a much better customer experience. When that happens, clients will no longer need to explore alternative/online lenders because their financial institution will be delivering the convenience, speed and path of least resistance to the cash they need to grow their business. The institution benefits from reduced costs, increased customer and employee retention, as well as portfolio and overall growth in revenue-per-customer.

Mike Dillon