The unmatched value of online lending software for banks

No matter the instance or line of business, lending can be a complicated process. And complicated things take time. The average time-to-decision for traditional banks falls between three and five weeks, and the average time-to-cash is nearly three months.

There are many common reasons for these painful delays. Some product application forms seem unnecessarily long, so lenders are forced to sit and wait while consumers complete the application. Meanwhile, consumers may be asked to chase down tax returns, bank statements, and other key information — sometimes multiple times during the same application process. And lenders often use point solutions for important services, such as verifying assets, income, or employment, that don’t communicate with one another. One missed piece of information can lead to bottlenecks that are frustrating for lenders and can damage the customer experience.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The rise of online lending software for banks is helping to create a faster, far more modern lending process.

Online lending software is cloud-based technology delivered as a service.

Scalable and elastic, this type of solution can combine advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence into a single offering. This can not only improve your lending team’s efficiency and productivity, but deliver valuable insight into customer wants and needs.

Pioneering lenders are taking note. The cloud is now considered a critical investment for financial institutions that are looking to stay competitive. In fact, it is expected that 80% of all enterprise and mission-critical workloads will move to the cloud by 2025.

Online lending software for banks uses automation and paper-free tools to help you simplify the lending process and manage loan life cycles more efficiently.

Income and employment information can be verified at the time of application completion, and third party identity verification data sources can be checked through a single integration point.

All of this information can be used to pre-fill fields in the loan application, reducing the burden on the consumer.

With the more efficient processes that result from online lending software, your lending teams can expedite and simplify the traditionally time-intensive lending process, whether it’s for a personal loan, deposit account, credit card, or any other consumer banking product.

The speed, convenience, and agility benefits that come from a digital solution, teamed with the security, scalability, and cost-savings of the cloud, combine to help you deliver the fast, seamless experiences that your customers expect.

Many banks that have embraced online lending software are already realizing great success. Banks with digital processes can bring the ‘time-to-yes’ down to as little as five minutes, and the time-to-cash to less than 24 hours — a significant difference from what the industry is accustomed to.

Meanwhile, loan volumes can increase by as much as 20% and onboarding, underwriting, and fraud-related costs can be slashed dramatically for lenders who utilize online lending software.

Blend offers a standout solution for organizations seeking a long-term online lending software partner. Our modern, flexible cloud banking platform is built specifically with the evolving needs of today’s financial services providers in mind. It can help your organization:

With our single, unified cloud-based platform, you can rapidly deliver a best-in-class lending experience across all consumer banking products, including credit cards, vehicle loans, home equity loans, and deposit accounts.

The unified experience doesn’t just span products — it also spans channels. Customers can start an application in one channel, and seamlessly finish it in another.

Blend’s online lending software has been built with the user experience in mind. Its responsive design is intuitive and easy to navigate. Seamless borrower single sign-on from any digital device enables simple authentication.

You can also pre-fill customer-provided information to minimize manual tasks, and simple questions can be answered easily through inline help. If customers are looking for more in-depth explanations, Blend Co-pilot enables bankers to provide real-time assistance.

No longer is it necessary for your customers to spend countless hours looking for paper-based documents to support their application. Blend’s online lending software allows customers to connect to their accounts to upload asset, income, and tax information instead of manually tracing down documents.

Blend’s automation helps to free up a significant amount of time for loan officers — time that can be better spent supporting customers’ more complex needs as they move through life’s achievements and adversities. By creating a memorable, personalized experience, you can foster higher retention and improve customer lifetime value.

With Blend’s online lending software, you can automate processing tasks with data-driven workflows and pre-approve qualified customers in minutes to give them the confidence that they’ll receive the funds they need. When it comes to closing, a digital process for all closing types and the ability for borrowers to choose Remote Online Notarization close with eSignature can help expedite the process.

Indiana-based credit union Elements Financial is using Blend as a single solution for all of its consumer banking products.

“We want a consumer solution for all products because we don’t want our members to have different experiences on different platforms,” said Ron Senci, executive vice president of sales and lending.

Elements Financial’s efficiency gains with Blend’s home equity product are noteworthy — they went from an average of 30 calendar days to just 11.

As a result, mortgage loan originators can now cross-sell other products and the consumer lending team can look out for mortgage opportunities. “This is possible because everyone is in the same system, and it makes the process a lot easier,” said Bowering.