Remote Lending Teams & PPP Burnout
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced with your PPP process to date? It’s easy enough to put together a checklist, but even the most robust LOS solutions offer little by way of customer service and expectation management.
If you’re struggling to manage an onslaught of PPP applications, while working remotely with a team that is close to burnout, here are a few things to consider.
To manage more PPP applications in less time you need to solve the customer service challenge first.
It’s quite possible that a business who receives PPP funding through your organization might run the opposite direction when offered additional services based on a poor application experience.
Many applicants are not even aware of how much they can apply for, and it can be hard for them to decipher SBA guidance in a short period of time. Many lenders now offer access to PPP loans, and any perceived friction in providing you with the necessary information could result in them seeking funding elsewhere.
Managing dozens, or hundreds, of PPP applications at once requires more than underwriting automation. The challenge isn’t so much the underwriting component. The challenge is collecting, understanding, and organization the data across 500 applications.
Doing this on a grand scale is a customer service nightmare.
Your Processors and Underwriters need context to better understand the data they’re seeing.
With your team working remotely, it's time consuming and inefficient to send information about different projects, applications, and applicants back and forth via email and chat. Disorganized CRM threads are grossly insufficient when it comes to direct questions about specific application items, and team-wide access to quickly reference both internal and external notes about particular requirements.
The confusion continues beyond simply collecting and verifying information. Your entire team needs quick access prior client interactions. Not to mention, quick access to applicants via personalized emails and text alerts.
Your applicants are feeling overwhelmed as well!
For many businesses, PPP may be the first time they have needed to apply for funding, especially through SBA related funding. There's a learning curve that comes with new standardized forms, language, and processes. Streamlining the applicant’s to-do list in one place increases the chance that they’ll feel empowered to complete the full process. Providing guidance for each step in the process makes it easier for businesses to know what the required documents are and how to complete them while they’re on the run.
Most Loan Origination Systems do little to manage client expectations as they are not intentionally client-facing.
There’s an element of client education to every application process, and now more than ever small businesses need support to feel confident in their ability to apply for the PPP. With small business owners working overtime to keep their business running, and staying on top of pandemic-related guidelines, the time they have to work on an application is limited. Providing a straightforward outline of what is required, how to provide each piece of information, and what steps are still to come reassures your applicant that their time is being spent wisely.
For an out of the box PPP application process that both your clients and your team will love, please contact us below. We can have you up and running within a matter of days!