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The effects of COVID-19 left many businesses struggling to say afloat, prompting a flurry of lending activities, most notably the Paycheck Protections Program (PPP) backed by the U.S government. With both small businesses and individuals impacted by unemployment, financial uncertainty, and nationwide lockdowns, many have turned to non-bank lenders to help bridge the gap.
In response to this, we hosted the Diving Into New Lending Dynamics webinar, in partnership with Mambu, to take a closer look at the current status of lending in light of the pandemic and highlight new technologies and practices that help get funding to individuals and businesses fast.
One key way in which COVID-19 has affected the industry is in acting as a catalyst for rapid digitalisation; this is something that has been demonstrated not only in the lending industry but across the financial sector as a whole.
One of our guest speakers for the webinar, Rohit Arora, CEO & Co-founder of Biz2Credit & Biz2X, highlighted that “Customers are already going more and more digital over the last 3/4 years. Covid has totally changed the equation in a way that has been unprecedented, that customer behaviour that would’ve taken another at least 5-7 years has got compressed in less than a year”.
According to Rohit, the rollout of PPP programs and other key ideas and programs in which everything was online, clearly demonstrated that a lot of business lending can in fact happen digitally. His advice for those in the lending business was to focus on agility and evolving in a way that would allow your institution to be agile enough to quickly scale up in response to market disruptions, like the pandemic.
A great example of how lenders have responded to the industry’s changes was presented by Heather Francis, CEO & Founder of Elevate Funding, who explained that at Elevate Funding, they built their own software so that they could manage the growing consumer need for fast approval and faster funding. Heather argued strongly in favour of other institutions doing the same as well as really focusing on the type of infrastructure needed to run a successful lending service.
Robin Smith, Commercial Director, North America at Mambu, claimed that the critical key component to successful lending is data: “Data becomes your golden source for a lot of interesting activities in the lending space”. When dealing with fintech's like Rohit and Heather’s companies, data becomes crucial as these non-bank lenders have a unique opportunity to use non-traditional data for credit decisioning, underwriting, etc. Rohit argued that “what’s important is how do you use data, how do you use models, getting things done efficiently”.
In agreement, Heather added that “there has to be a level of transparency to create that same security and safety that they feel when they walk into their local credit union or bank who they’ve been with for ten years”, reiterating the effects of the pandemic whilst emphasising that despite the consequential digitalisation of the industry, customers still need to feel a sense of security, especially during a time of so much uncertainty.
Overall, the webinar clearly demonstrated the effects the pandemic has had on the lending industry and how the industry is evolving in response to market disruptions and the ever-changing consumer needs. To hear more of the panelists’ insight on diving into new lending dynamics, watch the webinar on-demand or read the whitepaper below.
⭐️ Heather Francis | CEO & Founder | ELEVATE FUNDING
⭐️ Rohit Arora | CEO & Co-Founder | BIZ2CREDIT & BIZ2X
⭐️ Robin Smith | Commercial Director, North America | MAMBU
⭐️ Johanna Pugh | Managing Director, North America | MAMBU
🎯 Download the Whitepaper: CLICK HERE
🎯 Watch the Webinar: CLICK HERE
About Mambu:
Mambu is the SaaS banking platform that is changing financial services. This rapidly growing company was launched in 2011 and is enabling customers to build modern banking and lending offerings fast, securely and simply. Through its composable approach, the platform gives customers the ability to design and service nearly any financial product while rapidly integrating to the best-of-service ecosystem of complementary solutions around the world. Mambu has a global network of over 500 employees that supports 180 customers in over 65 countries. It counts N26, OakNorth, ABN AMRO and Orange amongst its extensive list of customers.