Credit where it's due

A leading U.S. bank needed an effective end-to-end loan management process to not only help its commercial lending division improve customer satisfaction, but also improve audit compliance.

Over time, operations at the commercial lending division of a top U.S. bank had devolved into a morass of disjointed legacy systems. Credit decisions and loan management processes were slow and inefficient — partly because staff members were entering a lot of material by hand. All this resulted in unsatisfied customers, cost overruns, reduced productivity, and inaccurate compliance reporting.

First, we performed a root cause analysis of the existing system architecture and the workflows it produced. Specifically, we were looking for factors that hinder customer satisfaction and audit compliance — and we found them. For starters, there were too many disparate systems at play. Security and data compliance processes were complex and arcane. Workflows were inefficient. And people were doing too much manual work.

We then determined how each of these concerns affected compliance and customer satisfaction, and used that as the basis for applying GRADE — our digital commercial loan optimization system. GRADE delivered fully integrated, straight-through, end-to-end loan processing across the front, middle, and back offices. What’s more, lead generation, credit analysis, credit decision, exposure management, pricing, document management, and advanced reporting were all part of the package.

Here are a few other key ways that GRADE helped the company:

Standardized systems and workflows

Our digital commercial loan optimization system designed—and enforced—automated and optimized business processes, making it easy to configure all 65 standard enterprise workflow patterns. Plus, it put an event-based workflow system in place, allowing any activity to interact with or initiate a workflow. The system used the rules engine to segment workflows into team queues and tasks for skill-based routing, workload management, and separation of control

Customer experience

GRADE’s tight and securely integrated open web capabilities meant staff no longer needed multiple logins to access external systems for fraud checks or financial analyses. It integrates fully with third-party systems, such as salesforce.com, using a service- oriented architecture. The system adapts to changing business needs with configurable rules and a decision table. It tracks accountability, service level agreements, and performance metrics.

Security and compliance

The system integrates IT and corporate identity services for a single sign-on. It controls access to all subsystems and delivery channels based on a user’s role. It has strong data encryption and masking that meets compliance and data governance standards. In addition, it digitizes and tracks compliance using field-level modification snapshots with timestamp and user details.

Document management and standardized reporting

GRADE eliminates manual processes by dynamically generating documents. It provides complete data visibility and easy document access with versioning, indexing, role-based access, and event-based processing. It issues custom scorecards across segments and products. Its advanced reporting system allows for real-time tracking.

Our winning combination of GRADE alongside reengineered processes helped the bank achieve:

• Quicker credit decisions for greater customer satisfaction
• Simplified credit policies
• Internal audits with zero infractions
• Centralized, integrated services and reporting
• Faster roll-outs for new products
• Fewer paper-intensive processes and better data integrity
• Cost savings via transaction-based pricing