The Best Investment Lenders Can Make for Their Small Business Customers

April is here and with it comes another jobs report. In March, the economy showed further signs of strengthening as employers added another 400,000 jobs, driving unemployment down to 3.6 percent—or a 50-year low.

A large portion of the job gains were once again driven by small businesses; a segment of the economy considered by many to be key to growth for community banks and credit unions in 2022.

Given the small business rebound and the segment’s strategic importance for lenders this year, it goes without saying that competition in this space is as fierce as it has ever been.

Indeed, today’s community banks and credit unions aren’t just competing locally, they’re also competing against national financial institutions, digital-first challenger banks, and alternative lenders like Blue Vine and On Deck.

Community institutions, however, have a lot to offer small businesses in their regions that online and national competitors have a difficult time replicating, such as first-class customer service and ultra competitive interest rates. Unfortunately, more times than not, a lack of technology keeps them out of conversations they should be leading.

With Small Business Week on the horizon, a spotlight is once again being shined on this segment, leaving many financial institutions thinking about the best ways they can support the businesses in their communities. This year, the best investment banks and credit unions can make for their business customers is a modern loan origination system.

Why invest in a modern loan origination system for business banking?

To win business banking relationships in 2022 and beyond, banks and credit unions will need to provide exceptional digital experiences.

Simply put, business banking products that require a ton of paper and multiple branch visits are just not competitive in a market increasingly driven by convenience and efficiency.

While retail banking has seen a digital transformation take place over the course of a decade, business banking’s digital revolution is only recently occurring in earnest—catalyzed by the forced shifts in borrower behavior that took place during the first two years of the pandemic.

As banks and credit unions look for ways to modernize their business banking products and services, many end up at the obvious starting point: traditional loan origination systems.

But these traditional loan origination systems were largely built for retail banking and therefore weren’t built for the unique challenges and complexities of business banking. Further, legacy systems like these are typically big, cumbersome pieces of technology that can be difficult to implement and train on, ballooning project timelines from weeks, to months, to a year or more.

A modern loan origination system, like Numerated, is built for business banking from the ground up. This new generation of LOS is designed to provide an industry-leading experience for bankers and borrowers, drive incredible efficiencies for financial institutions, and is easy enough to implement and launch in weeks.

A modern LOS for banks and credit unions that want to grow business banking

Growing in this segment means finding, developing, and maintaining quality relationships with your business customers.

Providing this level of white-glove concierge service, including tailoring solutions to each customers’ needs, creates obvious bottlenecks that makes business banking at scale difficult, if not impossible.

Numerated’s modern LOS is purpose built for business banking, with experience, efficiency, and ease of use at its core.

The Numerated Loan Origination System’s unique use of data allows it to provide the best customer experience available, while providing the back office with incredible efficiency, and branches with a user interface easy enough for anyone to train on and use.

In fact, Numerated’s LOS is so easy to use it can be fully implemented and deployed in as few as 72 days.

It’s why FinTech Breakthrough has named Numerated the Best Business Lending Platform for 2022 and why it’s the best investment that you can make for your business customers in the lead up to Small Business Week.

Learn more about Numerated’s loan origination system by watching a digital lending demo, or by checking out our 2022 product roadmap.