Fix the Broken Processes in Commercial Lending with Holistic Automation

How Banks Can Eliminate Silos, Reduce Complexity, and Accelerate Loan Approvals

The State of Commercial Lending Today

Commercial lending forms the backbone of most banks’ loan portfolios, yet it remains riddled with inefficiencies. As banks expand into new geographies and business models, they face growing competition, stringent regulations, and rapidly evolving customer expectations.

Unfortunately, many financial institutions are still operating with fragmented, disjointed processes that slow down approvals, drive up costs, and leave customers dissatisfied. Employees, too, are bogged down by manual work, complex handoffs, and outdated technology that limits productivity.

The root cause is clear legacy systems and disconnected applications. Without a unified lending ecosystem, data remains siloed, approvals are delayed, and compliance becomes harder to manage.

Why Lending Processes Break Down

Banks have spent decades layering new applications over old ones for loan origination, tracking, spreading, documentation, and risk management creating a patchwork of systems that don’t talk to each other.

Each application solves part of a problem, but together they create technical debt and workflow chaos. As a result, institutions rely on manual interventions, email-based communication, and paper files that complicate auditing and compliance.

Symptoms of a Broken Lending Process

• Duplicated work and manual rekeying of data.
• Paper-based document handling and high maintenance costs.
• Dependency on emails for approvals and tracking.
• Poor visibility and ineffective monitoring.
• Frequent compliance gaps and audit difficulties.

This fragmented setup leads to higher operational costs and slower turnaround times, making traditional lenders less competitive against agile, digital-first institutions.

Why End-to-End Automation is the Answer

To thrive in today’s environment, banks must connect their front, middle, and back offices through a unified automation layer. This ensures that data flows seamlessly across departments, enabling faster approvals, consistent decisions, and an enhanced customer experience.

End-to-end automation replaces piecemeal tools with a cohesive platform that can orchestrate all lending activities from origination and risk assessment to disbursement and monitoring.

Benefits of Holistic Automation

• Breaks silos and integrates legacy systems.
• Eliminates redundant manual tasks.
• Improves decision-making and compliance accuracy.
• Reduces turnaround time for loan approvals.
• Enhances customer experience through transparency and speed.

Low-code automation platforms, such as NewgenONE, allow banks to build configurable workflows that connect all systems and deliver visibility across the entire lending lifecycle.

How Automation Simplifies Lending

With the right digital lending platform, banks can transform complex, paper-heavy processes into simple, data-driven workflows.

Automation Enables Banks to:

• Capture loan applications from multiple channels and store them in a centralized repository for easy retrieval and auditability.
• Automatically generate key documents such as Credit Approval Memos (CAM), commitment letters, and management reports.
• Route cases electronically through the appropriate approval hierarchy, eliminating delays.
• Use AI-driven data extraction to auto-fill credit applications and internal forms.
• Standardize document formats and automate reporting for compliance.

This unified approach not only accelerates lending but also improves accuracy and decision quality across every loan type.

Becoming an Automation-First Lender

To deliver seamless commercial lending, financial institutions must evolve from fragmented automation efforts to a platform-driven model.

What to Look for in a Modern Lending Platform

• Configurable Low-Code Environment: Enables faster customization without heavy coding.
• Agility and Flexibility: Adapts to evolving business and regulatory needs.
• Strong Orchestration Capabilities: Connects legacy and new systems for unified workflows.
• Scalability: Supports enterprise-wide automation at scale.
• Dynamic Process Framework: Allows business users to modify workflows quickly.

A unified, automation-first approach leads to straight-through processing (STP), ensuring faster decisions and improved compliance.

Straight-Through Processing for Faster Approvals

STP reduces manual touchpoints across lending stages from applicant pre-screening and risk assessment to deviation management and disbursement.

By embedding rules and policies into automation frameworks, banks can ensure that every application follows defined credit guidelines automatically.

STP Advantages

• Automated rule execution across channels and products.
• Instant compliance validation against credit policies.
• Faster exception handling through predefined workflows.
• Improved accuracy in decision-making.

With STP, banks can achieve real-time credit processing, reducing turnaround time from weeks to hours and improving both customer satisfaction and regulatory adherence.

The Newgen Advantage in Commercial Lending

Newgen’s Commercial Lending Solution, built on the low-code NewgenONE Platform, helps financial institutions digitize and automate their end-to-end lending processes for all loan types.

Key Features

• Unified platform for origination, underwriting, risk rating, documentation, disbursement, and post-loan monitoring.
• Integration with external systems such as OFAC, Equifax, and appraisal agencies.
• Configurable dashboards and analytics for better loan tracking and performance visibility.
• Built-in rule engine for automated credit decisioning and policy compliance.
• Support for all major lending products commercial, real estate, construction, SBA, leasing, and more.

Proven Business Impact

• 50 percent reduction in operational costs.
• 80 percent faster process turnaround time.
• 90–95 percent improvement in first-time-right applications.
• 90 percent enhancement in compliance and quality.
• 75 percent increase in tracking and monitoring efficiency.

Newgen’s configurable low-code framework gives banks the best of both worlds ready-to-deploy, domain-rich functionality and the flexibility to continuously adapt as business needs evolve.

Why Act Now

The lending ecosystem is changing faster than ever. Traditional institutions must rethink their operating models to compete with digital lenders that deliver near-instant approvals.

By embracing end-to-end automation, banks can:

• Optimize efficiency without overhauling core systems.
• Achieve transparency and control across the loan lifecycle.
• Ensure compliance while reducing cost and risk.
• Deliver a faster, more personalized borrower experience.

Automation is no longer a future investment it is the foundation of modern commercial lending.

About Newgen

Newgen Software is a global provider of a unified digital transformation platform with native process automation, content services, communication management, and AI/ML capabilities.

Leading enterprises worldwide rely on Newgen’s low-code platform to rapidly build and deploy content-driven, customer-centric applications across use cases such as onboarding, lending, and underwriting.