Revamping Commercial Lending: One Bank’s $1M Success Story

How One Bank Revamped Commercial Lending Operations and Lifted Revenue by over $1M

A super-regional bank wanted to take a deep dive into their current state commercial lending process. They were looking for hidden efficiencies and opportunities for automation of manual tasks. Inconsistencies spotted across their business lines and systems hinted to the bank that there was room to automate.

The bank faced two primary challenges of performing the analysis in-house. First, they faced resource constraints and couldn’t pull internal team members off current assignments. Second, they wanted an unbiased opinion from other experts in the lending space.

Bridgeforce has been a longstanding trusted advisor to this bank, and so having seen first-hand what Bridgeforce was capable of, the bank asked us to handle the assessment.

Finding Efficiency Across Multiple Lines of Business

Over 15 weeks, our three-person team looked for areas that could be improved. The team also looked for quick “wins” and areas where automation could replace manual tasks.

This project started with an overall assessment of the current state. We broke the assessment into questions designed to capture the big picture of the client’s commercial lending process. In discovery meetings, we asked: “are they doing this process the best way? Are employee skills optimally aligned? Do they have the right tools to perform effectively? And how do they get from the current to the target state?” We uncovered over 200 process elements that needed further investigation during the discovery phase.

Once we established specifically how the bank’s commercial lending unit operated, we quickly mapped out each line of business in “swim-lane” format, highlighting the client’s pain points. We relied on the meticulous skill of our internal process mapping expert to augment the client’s team and speed up progress.

And finally, using our proprietary assessment capture matrix, we recommended process changes that would increase efficiency. The matrix helped us compare the client’s current process with industry best practices and the client’s own internal expectations.

Lifting Revenue by Over $1M

After the 15-week project, we identified a substantial number of opportunities which were actioned by the client and Bridgeforce across their systems and governance, underwriting, decisioning, documentation, funding portfolio management, and problem loan resolution. We helped them prioritize their next steps with a change roadmap that would inform planning and accelerate execution.

It was refreshing for the bank to have a new, unbiased perspective on their current state. They felt fully informed and had a clean view of each opportunity. But beyond the good feelings, the bank enjoyed a revenue lift of over $1M from the new efficiencies. They’re also projecting cost savings of $300k annualized after four years.

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