Technology Management: A Challenge for Small Lenders
Written by: Paul Bates, Senior Technology Consultant
For those of you who generally operate as small lender, where your employees must possess multiple skillsets and you’re often forced to call on them to wear multiple hats, you know firsthand how challenging it can be to manage your lending technology, and the endless administrative responsibilities that come along with it. There are often two basic thought processes on how to best manage this:
The IT Team: The IT Team sometimes seems like the logical choice for this. They keep your entire technology universe secure and running properly. The security aspect alone is a constant challenge as new threats arrive daily. Even though the team might have the technical skills to perform the job, there are inherent challenges. Successful business application administration requires a solid understanding of the business line being supported, and mortgage lending is a very distinct line within the institution, with its own unique language, velocity of change, and compliance requirements. This presents a challenge to even the most seasoned IT groups.
The Lending Team: The lending team originates, processes, and closes the loans for the institution in an efficient and compliant manner. They understand the business and they know how the technology should work to support this process. They understand the velocity of change and what is required to keep up with always evolving regulatory and investor requirements. The main challenges for small lending teams are bandwidth and system skills. They know how they want the system to work but might lack the technical knowledge on how to accomplish this, or they simply don’t have the time.
The problem with asking either of these teams to manage your lending is that neither independently possess the combined skillsets necessary to be proactive, and instead end up operating in a reactive state. Issues will get addressed if critical, but non-critical items can pile up. New feature functionality often does not get implemented, and the investment made to these technologies becomes underused and stale.
SCA has been helping many small lenders caught in this realm for years. We are fluent in both languages, Lending and IT, helping you effectively manage your lending technology investment in an efficient and compliant manner. Our expert consultants have been doing this for over 30 years: providing you with seasoned industry knowledge of multiple technology solutions found in the marketplace.
Lenders use our services for ongoing support, and projects both big and small. We help give the small lender big lender support – without the need for full time adds to staff-- keeping your costs down and your productivity up. The CEO of a community bank client recently commented that they saw more progress in a month than they had in a year’s time, by working with SCA.
Please reach out to our Director, Bill Dolan via email (WDolan@scapartnering.com), or by phone at 617-694-2617, to start the conversation around how SCA can make managing your technology stack work for you.
