Within commercial banking, historical protocols have kept financial spreading in a Dark Ages of sorts, bogged down by slow, inaccurate and inefficient manual processes. Tax returns come in during the risk assessment process, only to be tied up in slow and error-prone workflows.
This is where automated spreading software steps in, offering a more efficient and reliable alternative to legacy workflows like these.
Given the prevalence of cloud and digital solutions, it might seem remarkable that manual processes still exist in any industry, let alone in commercial banking. The truth is, however, that tradition often trumps innovation.
In this blog post, we’ll cover just how a tool such as FlashSpread can significantly impact commercial lenders, including:
- Improving workflow efficiency
- Increasing productivity
- Allowing processes to scale up as needed
With solutions such as FlashSpread, commercial lenders can enjoy improved efficiency and all of the benefits that stem from such improvements.
Table of Contents
Why the Transition to Automated Spreading is Necessary
Commercial lending depends entirely on how quickly and efficiently an institution can analyze financial statements when executing credit risk assessments. Manual processes have long been the order of the day in this workflow. Junior analysts are often tasked with entering financial statement data by hand, a time-consuming process.
What many institutions may not realize, however, is that speed is not the only pain point here. Manual entry also increases the risks of bad data via human error, for one. These processes are also difficult to scale up to deal with a higher volume of incoming credit applications.
Finally, the culled data is static and siloed, making it harder to leverage in a dynamic way throughout the credit assessment process. All alerts, too, are limited by the analog and siloed nature of this data.
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All of these pain points can and do combine to expose a commercial bank to the last thing any institution wants — increased credit risk and operational costs. With competitors already moving towards digitalization, commercial banks ‘married’ to manual entry also face losing an edge in the marketplace.
The Solution – FlashSpread Automated Spreading Software
FlashSpread automated spreading software offers a more than viable alternative to manual processing, giving commercial banks the technological edge they need to increase efficiency and cost savings.
How Automated Spreading Works
FlashSpread uses technology to “scrape” the data off of scanned tax returns. This data is then presented to the client user for review and made instantly accessible via a variety of Financial Reports, including Global Analysis.
One significant differentiator for this financial spreading software for banks is in how it can handle any PDF file. As end users and the industry continue the transition into Industry 4.0, files can come into a commercial bank as scanned or digital. Some, too, may even have password-protection in place or field values that are unreadable or hidden behind watermarks. This automated financial spreading tool has the ability to address all of these issues and can handle any type of PDF.
The Results
Implementing FlashSpread at a commercial bank delivers sizable results. By automating workflows with FlashSpread, commercial lenders can:
- Create a more productive business lending cycle
- Determine applicant qualification in seconds
- Give business owners instant feedback
- Feed only the best qualified deals to underwriters
When tax returns come in as part of the credit assessment process, intake happens quickly and easily. That data, too, becomes real-time actionable data that an institution can access as needed throughout the credit approval process.
Roundup
Sticking with legacy solutions or traditional processes only holds commercial lenders back at this point. To learn more about how automated spreading software, like FlashSpread, can increase efficiencies at your financial institution, visit us today.
