Retail banking is increasingly competitive, especially with the influx of fintechs like LendingTree and Rocket Loans. In this competitive digital market, financial institutions will have to lean into digital adoption to satisfy customer expectations. Consumers can easily find information about the importance and ease of shopping for retail loans among online lenders and traditional financial institutions. So, how will your financial institution set itself apart and be the one the customer chooses? How can it compete?
The good news for financial institutions is that they have already demonstrated their ability to leverage digital tools to create a better, faster lending experience. An important aspect to becoming more competitive, faster, and, therefore, more profitable in the retail lending space comes down to scalability. Manual, repetitive data entry, physical applications and signatures, and chasing customers down for additional documents waste valuable time for the lender and frustrates borrowers. For example, with retail lending software, like a loan origination system (LOS), financial institutions can transform inefficient processes for a frictionless lending experience.
With an LOS, financial institutions can offer a fully digital retail lending experience to their customers, where customers can quickly apply for loans, securely upload documents, and electronically sign for a loan online anytime, anywhere. Mobile-friendly, customer-centric platforms put the consumer in the driver’s seat, allowing them to quickly and easily apply for their loan.
Meanwhile, the financial institution can perform quick analysis and automate the decisioning process with an end-to-end digital LOS, helping to ensure efficiency, consistency, and scalability. With an integrated customer relationship manager (CRM) to track the institution's customer pipeline and notify lenders of upcoming tasks and automated workflow templates, an LOS optimizes many areas of consumer lending. Banks and credit unions that can make fast, creditworthy decisions give themselves a much-needed advantage in a competitive consumer lending environment.
“With loan origination systems, you only have to touch the data once. One touch and it propagates,” said Marc Meoli, Solutions Consultant at Abrigo. The lender can focus on new banking relationships rather than chasing down documents and re-inputting the customer's information. “This is how an institution gains efficiencies and gains power,” Meoli said.
