Document Workflow: Global Bank Sees 94% Efficiency Improvement in Loan Generation with HotDocs

A global bank having 140,000 employees and more than 700 branch offices had an efficiency problem. From origination to closing, it would take the bank, on average, three days to finish a commercial loan. Not only was the process slow, expensive, and cumbersome, but it also left the bank exposed via non-compliance and human error. To solve this problem, the bank deployed a proprietary BPM, which it integrated with a powerful HotDocs template. Together, the two technologies reduced the time necessary to generate a commercial loan down to about an hour, while, at the same time, improved the approval process and the overall quality of the loan documents.

The loan workflow begins by querying the bank’s various databases for information about the customer making the loan application. All relevant data is mapped into a HotDocs interview. A relationship manager keys in all remaining necessary data and submits the interview to the loan approval committee.

Based on business analytics built into the HotDocs interview, the loan committee sees a color-coded version of the answer file. Answers that comply with the bank’s best lending practices are coded in green. Answers that are borderline are coded in amber. And answers that fall outside the bank’s own lending guidelines are coded in red.

With color coding in place, the loan committee can make a value judgment about the quality of a loan and determine whether approval is warranted. Questionable data points can be routed back to a relationship manager for clarification. When a loan is approved, the relationship manager can enter additional required data into the interview, and the complex commercial loan agreement, along with collateral documentation, can be instantaneously generated and executed, and electronic versions can be profiled into the bank’s ECM.

Given the efficiency improvement the new workflow system provided, the bank was able to repurpose several hundred clerical workers, who previously spent time editing and proofreading documents. Furthermore, legal incidents arising out of human-introduced errors in the documents have all but disappeared.