Rebuilding a lending platform's core workflow
Replace a manual, spreadsheet-driven loan approval workflow with a connected system.
Industry
Financial Services
Business Size
Mid-sized regional lender, ~150 employees
Duration
14 weeks
Services Involved
Business Systems, AI & Automation
Technology
Custom Software, API Integrations, Workflow Automation
Team Size
5 — strategist, 2 engineers, designer, QA
Loan approvals took up to six days because underwriting, compliance, and document review lived in disconnected spreadsheets and email threads. Growth had made the process unsustainable.
We expected the bottleneck to be underwriting judgment. It was actually document collection and handoffs between departments — the decision itself rarely took long.
We chose to build a connected internal platform rather than buy an off-the-shelf loan origination system, since their approval criteria were genuinely unique to their lending programs. We rejected a full core-system replacement as too risky and too slow.
We mapped the workflow for underwriters, compliance, and processors, and gave each role a purpose-built view instead of one generic dashboard.
Built on their existing infrastructure, with new API integrations connecting document storage, credit bureaus, and compliance checks, automating the handoff between stages.
Approval time dropped from 6 days to 4 hours.
Approval time dropped from 6 days to 4 hours
Manual data entry reduced by roughly 70%
Compliance review time cut in half
“We discovered that automating the handoffs between departments created more impact than automating the underwriting decision itself.”