The 10 Best Automation Tools for Lenders

HubSpot is a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, and can be a game-changer for cash flow lenders and direct lenders. It enables lenders to centralize customer data and interactions, streamline the underwriting process, and improve customer service. With its contact management feature, lenders can easily track customer interactions, from initial contact to loan disbursement and follow-ups, fostering stronger relationships building trust with prospects, applicants, and existing customers.

HubSpot's CRM also has features for task management, deal tracking, and pipeline management, which can provide valuable insights into the lending process, help identify bottlenecks, and optimize workflows. As a result, lenders can make faster and more informed decisions, reducing the time to disburse loans and improving the overall customer experience.

Additionally, HubSpot's powerful marketing and sales automation features can help cash flow lenders and direct lenders attract, engage, and convert more leads. Its marketing automation capabilities allow lenders to create targeted marketing campaigns based on customer data, boosting their reach and conversion rates. With HubSpot's sales automation, lenders can automate routine tasks, allowing them to focus more on closing deals and less on administrative work.

Moreover, HubSpot’s reporting and analytics tools provide valuable insights into campaign performance and customer behavior, enabling lenders to continually refine their strategies and improve their return on investment. By leveraging HubSpot, lenders can enhance their marketing and sales efforts, attract more qualified leads, improve conversion rates, and ultimately increase their loan disbursements.

Intercom, one of the world's largest and most robust customer messaging platforms, can be incredibly beneficial for cash flow lenders and direct lenders. Its real-time chat feature allows lenders to engage with potential borrowers instantly, answering questions, providing (and collecting) valuable information that can help expedite loan approval and disbursement processes. The platform's ability to segment users based on their behavior and attributes enables lenders to provide highly personalized service, improving customer experience, and fostering trust.

Intercom's automated messaging system can help lenders deliver timely reminders or updates, keeping borrowers informed about their loan status or repayment schedules, thereby minimizing defaults and maintaining healthy cash flows.

On the marketing side, Intercom offers the ability to create targeted email and in-app campaigns, which can be highly useful for lenders looking to attract new borrowers or re-engage existing ones. Its customer engagement software allows lenders to nurture leads and guide them through the loan application process with automated yet personalized messages.

Furthermore, the platform provides in-depth insights and analytics, helping lenders understand what messaging works best and where improvements are needed. Intercom's robust capabilities can be integrated into a lender's existing workflow, enhancing communication efficiency, improving lead conversion, and ultimately, driving loan volume. By leveraging Intercom, cash flow lenders and direct lenders can significantly enhance their customer engagement strategies, streamline operations, and drive growth.

In the fast-paced world of online lending, efficient loan processing systems are crucial. This is where open banking platforms like Plaid come into play, offering a game-changing solution for direct lenders. By providing secure, real-time access to borrowers' financial information, Plaid significantly streamlines the loan application process and brings an unparalleled level of speed, efficiency, and accuracy to online and direct lending.

Traditionally, loan applications have involved a tedious process of manual documentation, with borrowers required to provide extensive financial records for income verification and credit checks. This manual method is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. Plaid transforms this process, allowing lenders to automate data collection and quickly access borrowers' transaction histories, income levels, and other financial data. The result? Faster loan approvals and more accurate lending decisions.

However, not all applicants (especially business applicants) are willing or able to provide prospective lending partners with direct access to their bank accounts. In those cases, manual review may still be required. We discuss options for improved manual document review below:

As mentioned above, not all businesses are comfortable connecting directly to their bank account. They would rather share statements in pdf format (or, even worse, scanned statements). This introduces a whole new set of challenges for business owners. Solving these challenges and streamlining bank statement review is the focus of our work here at EXB.

EXB Financial's software enables lenders to rapidly and accurately extract transaction data from bank statements. Those transactions can then be categorized, analyzed for fraud, and quickly and efficiently exported into a third-party LOS, in-house underwriting tool, or a spreadsheet for cash flow analysis.

This type of analysis may seem simple, but the improvements in accuracy that we've delivered are not trivial. Existing tools in the marketplace have relied on template-based solutions or legacy machine learning systems, and have had a non-zero error rate that can significant impact underwriting quality. Our tool combines state-of-the-art computer vision tools with a proprietary "zero-shot" natural language processing model to quickly and accurately extract and analyze transaction data. These advanced technologies allow for more accurate and data-driven decision-making. By harnessing the power of AI and ML, lenders can make more informed decisions, reduce fraud, and enhance customer engagement. (Additional information available here.

If you are interested in learning more about EXB Financial's leading bank statement extraction and analysis tools, please feel free to book a demo with our team.

CopyAI, an AI-powered copywriting tool, can be a significant asset for cash flow lenders and direct lenders. With its ability to generate high-quality, persuasive content in seconds, it can streamline and enhance various aspects of communication and marketing efforts. For instance, lenders can use CopyAI to create compelling loan product descriptions, email campaigns, ad copies, or social media posts to attract potential borrowers. The tool can provide numerous variations of a single prompt, offering a range of choices and reducing the time spent brainstorming and drafting content. This can help lenders effectively communicate their unique selling points, educate potential borrowers about their offerings, and convert more leads into customers.

Moreover, CopyAI can assist in creating informative and engaging content for customer support and education, such as FAQs or guides on loan application processes, repayment terms, and best financial practices. This can significantly enhance customer experience and trust, leading to better customer relationships and improved loan repayment rates. By automating routine copywriting tasks, lenders can focus more on strategic decisions and customer service, optimizing their operations and productivity. The data-driven insights provided by CopyAI can further enable lenders to refine their content strategy and messaging, helping them reach their target audience more effectively. Thus, by leveraging CopyAI, cash flow lenders and direct lenders can amplify their marketing efforts, improve customer engagement, and drive business growth.

Zapier, an online automation tool, stands as a powerful ally for online and direct lenders seeking to streamline their operations and improve their services. Zapier's strength lies in its ability to "zap" or link different applications together, creating automated workflows known as Zaps. These workflows can automate repetitive tasks, freeing up lenders to focus on higher-level decision-making and customer engagement.

For instance, lenders often need to extract data from loan applications and enter it into their CRM or loan origination system. Zapier can automate this data transfer process, reducing the chances of manual errors and significantly speeding up the process. Online and direct lenders can also set up Zaps to automatically send notification emails to borrowers at different stages of the loan process, ensuring timely and consistent communication.

Moreover, Zapier supports integration with over 3,000 web applications, including popular lending software and customer relationship management platforms. This extensive range of compatibility allows lenders to customize their automation workflows according to their specific needs (integrating with tools for automated bank statement analysis, for example).

One of the most beneficial aspects of using Zapier is its scalability. Whether a lender is a small business looking to optimize a handful of processes or a larger enterprise aiming to automate complex workflows across numerous departments, Zapier's tiered pricing and robust capabilities make it a versatile choice for businesses of all sizes. By leveraging Zapier, online and direct lenders can save time, reduce manual efforts, and create a smoother, more efficient lending process. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also leads to a better, more seamless customer experience, which is critical in the increasingly competitive lending industry.

UiPath, a leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform, offers a powerful solution for online and direct lenders seeking to automate their operations and enhance service delivery. With its advanced RPA capabilities, UiPath enables lenders to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks, increasing operational efficiency and freeing up staff to focus on strategic decision-making and customer service.

For instance, UiPath can automate the loan origination process, which typically involves repetitive tasks like data entry, document collection, and basic data validation. With UiPath, these tasks can be performed by software robots, leading to faster processing times, reduced errors, and increased productivity. In addition, UiPath offers the capability to integrate with various other platforms used by lenders, such as CRM systems, loan servicing software, and risk management tools. This allows for the creation of comprehensive automation workflows that cover various stages of the lending process.

One standout feature of UiPath is its ability to leverage AI and machine learning. This means that its software robots can learn and improve over time, becoming more efficient at processing tasks and even capable of handling more complex activities. As with Zapier, UiPath's scalability is another strong point. Whether a lender is a small business looking to automate a few processes or a larger enterprise aiming to streamline complex workflows across several departments, UiPath can accommodate their needs.

Marketo, a premier marketing automation platform, offers a powerful suite of tools for online and direct lenders looking to optimize their marketing efforts and nurture client relationships. With Marketo's capabilities, lenders can automate and measure marketing tasks and workflows, leading to improved efficiency and more effective campaigns.

For instance, lenders can utilize Marketo's robust email marketing tools to automate the delivery of personalized messages to prospective borrowers, improving engagement and conversion rates. Marketo also offers powerful lead management capabilities that can help lenders track and manage leads throughout the sales funnel, scoring leads based on engagement and helping to prioritize the most promising prospects.

Moreover, Marketo integrates seamlessly with various CRM systems, allowing lenders to maintain a unified view of their clients across both sales and marketing efforts. This integration helps to foster better alignment between these two crucial functions, enhancing the overall effectiveness of the lender's client relationship strategy.

Furthermore, Marketo offers comprehensive marketing analytics. With these tools, lenders can gain deep insights into the performance of their marketing campaigns, understanding which activities are driving the most revenue and adjusting their strategies accordingly. Marketo's scalability is another significant advantage. Whether a lender is a small business aiming to automate a few marketing processes or a larger institution looking to streamline complex, multi-channel campaigns, Marketo can meet their needs.

ComplianceOne, a solution offered by Wolters Kluwer, presents a compelling solution for online and direct lenders seeking to streamline their loan origination process while ensuring regulatory compliance.

ComplianceOne unifies the entire lending process, from origination to closing, into a single, efficient system.

With ComplianceOne, lenders can manage all types of loans and lines of credit, reducing the need for multiple systems and simplifying the lending process. This not only increases operational efficiency but also reduces the chances of errors that can arise from managing disparate systems. One of the key strengths of ComplianceOne is its comprehensive compliance support. The solution is continuously updated to reflect the latest regulatory changes, helping lenders stay compliant with relevant laws and regulations. This reduces the risk of non-compliance and the potential penalties and reputational damage that can result from it.
ComplianceOne also provides robust document management capabilities. It can automatically generate compliant loan documents, reducing manual effort and ensuring accuracy.

VantageScore provides a powerful tool for online and direct lenders looking to accurately assess the creditworthiness of potential borrowers. Developed by the three major credit bureaus, VantageScore offers a consistent and predictive credit scoring model that can be a key asset in the lending decision-making process.

One of the primary advantages of VantageScore is its use of a single, tri-bureau scoring algorithm. This means that regardless of the credit bureau, the score calculation is consistent, leading to more predictable scoring outcomes across all three bureaus. This consistency can provide lenders with a more reliable understanding of a borrower's credit risk.

Moreover, VantageScore's model is designed to score a broader population, including those with thin credit files or who are new to credit. This is particularly beneficial for online and direct lenders who may have a diverse customer base. By being able to assess the creditworthiness of these traditionally un-scoreable segments, lenders can expand their potential customer base while managing risk effectively.

VantageScore also incorporates innovative data modeling techniques and uses more granular data from credit files, which can result in a more precise understanding of a consumer's credit behavior.