A privately-owned Principal Lender offering an extensive range of flexible short-term property finance products, including bridging loans, refurbishment and development finance, all of which are offered at competitive rates with no hidden charges.
The provider works closely with clients, professional brokers and intermediaries, with each application considered on its individual merits. The experienced team make all lending decisions in-house, to ensure a fast, responsive service delivers tailored financial solutions on time, every time.
Project: Develop an automated sales pipeline management solution
The process for brokers or developers to secure the funds they need to purchase, refurbish or develop property begins with a quick enquiry form, into which basic details of the property and the amount they wish to borrow will be entered by the prospective client.
The details within this form ensures the providers loans team can quickly decide if the proposed deal fits within their lending criteria. For all parties involved, the decision to lend or not needs to be made as quickly as possible.
Speed of decision and time from application to loan drawdown are critical factors in the property finance sector. But with little process automation, the time to undertake the necessary administrative activities can be a limiting factor and the reason Circyl were approached to develop a solution.
“In our world, it’s now all about providing brokers and property developers with an efficient, error-free loan process that delivers indicative terms within minutes and provides offer letters and loan funds within days, not weeks. Circyl really got under the skin of our business and understood the need to automate and developed a bespoke integration of our systems that puts us out in front of the competition, whilst allowing us to shape our business and our offering to better suit the market and changing demands of our clients”
- Finance Director
Alternative Lender
Solution
Recognising the need to speed up every step of the process, Circyl first integrated processes so when the criteria are fulfilled, indicative terms of the loan will be issued by the provider.
Like many alternative lenders, there was a reliance on manual data input and the transfer of client and deal-related information from enquiry forms or application forms to build the deal file.
There is always the risk of a mistake during the data entry process, which could be compounded when this same data is transferred to another necessary document, the deal file or the offer letter.
It is critical to the integrity of the loan process that there are no errors relating to the loan amount, the collateral, the people involved etc., at every step from enquiry to drawdown. When unregulated lenders pursue the path to becoming a regulated lender, this zero-error approach is even more important.
Every application creates a managed folder structure in SharePoint, containing all the documents related to the loan, including credit checks, bank statements, valuations, etc. All the documents can now be accessed through the new CRM platform, making better use the Microsoft Office 365 licence.
Any output generated in the process is now automatically stored in SharePoint. This makes it far easier for the lending team to search for any deal, the related documents or any particular piece of information they need. This emphasis on ease of search and interrogation of data, significantly speeds up the process.
Changes to the loan, or amends to documents are also handled much more easily now, ensuring everything is current and only the correct documents are ever available to the lending team.
The two-way integration of the Excel pricing model and the Dynamics CRM platform ensures they are always synchronised. If something needs to be amended or figures updated, everything changes and new documents can easily be output, with no danger of old documents corrupting the process.
The loan offer letter is now produced directly from the CRM system, supplanting the traditional process of copying and pasting, or re-typing data into the letter, mitigating the risk of transposing errors, whilst significantly cutting the time taken to complete the process.
Once the client accepts the offer and wishes to proceed with the loan, the newly automated process has cut the time taken for this stage of the loan process from days to minutes, helping the lender achieve its aim of delivering all loans within two weeks from enquiry to drawdown.
Benefits
The solution developed by Circyl, has increased the efficiency of the loan process, reduced the risk of an error being introduced or compounded and cut the time taken to process an application.
Everything is stored in the Microsoft Cloud, which makes information more accessible to the lending team at the providers headquarters, with everything easier to find and available from anywhere with any device, to support the dispersed sales team.
Utilising the Microsoft Power Platform, enables the solution to synchronise data from CRM to Power BI for advanced reporting and analytics, whilst opening up endless opportunities for further integration and automated business processes in future.
The application process is driven by the solution, with mandatory fields ensuring all the required data is captured accurately, before the next step of the application can be accessed.
Storing everything in the Cloud, also adds another layer to the firm’s resilience to cyber-attack or a serious incident affecting the head office and denying access to the paper-based documentation.
The transition to this new digital Dynamics CRM system offers a natural next step for the business, with the potential to turn simple leads into new application enquiries, whilst maintaining regular contact with clients, brokers and intermediaries.
Increasing efficiency and decreasing the time taken are the key benefits and likely to attract new clients wanting quick decisions on short-term property finance products, as they demand a source of regular loans at good rates, supplied in a timely manner.
Technologies utilised
During the project, Circyl leveraged the following technologies:
Power BI: Power BI is Microsoft’s cloud-based enterprise and self-service analytical solution that provides data modelling and visualisation capabilities across a range of data sources.Â
SharePoint: SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office, enabling organisations to manage and store documents efficiently. It is highly configurable, and solutions can be tailored to meet the unique needs of any organisations
“Spending time with the lender’s team and really understanding the process from enquiry to loan was key to the development of our solution. The new automated process ensures there is now only a need to enter data once, which reduces the risk of errors, whilst significantly speeding up the loan process. It’s now almost impossible for the lending team to work with incomplete data, which instils confidence in the documents produced and enhances the firm’s reputation as one of the leading alternative lenders, who knows how to exploit technology to the advantage of their clients.”
- Jason Betteridge
Managing Director, Circyl
Want to know more?
Circyl offer free consultations to allow businesses to discuss their productivity issues and ask us in-depth questions about our services and pricing.
Call 03333 209 969 to speak to a member of our team directly or send a message by filling in the contact form here.