Stronger Together. This motto is displayed by more and more companies as a way of showing solidarity with their clients, customers, members, employees and communities as they navigate through (and hopefully soon) out the other side of this global pandemic. And, when that slogan is transformed into actions, it really exemplifies that partnership.
Lending institutions are demonstrating that they are open to help even if their branches and main lobbies are temporarily closed. They are providing digital offerings to refinance auto loans and mortgages, issue quick emergency personal loans, defer loan payments and open new accounts for the underbanked to receive stimulus checks faster. Now many are taking part in the SBA PPP program to help small businesses in their communities.
If your organization is not able to digitally deliver the variety of account and lending products that your customers and members need at this time, what’s the quickest way to remedy that situation? Some banks and credit unions are looking to vendor partners who can close the gap. Several vendor partner programs offer both digital marketing and loan application acceptance portals so that lending institutions don’t have to shift resources from other mission critical activities in order to provide additional services to their customers and members.
NETWORK OF SOLUTIONS
For the last five weeks, MeridianLink has been extremely focused on developing solutions for the new challenges facing our clients as a result of the pandemic. We want to be sure our clients have what they need in order to help their customers and members with their financial needs. As MeridianLink staff conducted work-at-home brainstorming sessions, we realized that a major source of the digital experience that we can provide to our clients was already ready and waiting to be tapped…our network of vendor partners.
MeridianLink clients have access to our network of over 250+ vendor partners. The services that these companies proffer range from the obvious core system and credit data providers to more unique and specific products and services. This latter group of vendors offer up ways for lending institutions to do loan and account opening originations easier, with greater flexibility, lower risk, and provide value-added services that may be too difficult or costly to do in-house.
As we engaged our network partners we discovered that several partners were presenting programs that could be of great assistance to the customers/members of our clients NOW. They fit perfectly in the ‘How MeridianLink Can Help’ program. In this blog, we’re highlighting the opportunities from just three of our partners who have MeridianLink clients as customers.
AUTO REFINANCING
The purchase of new and used vehicles has slowed tremendously due to stay-at-home advisories and concerns over finances. As people search for ways to save money, the opportunity to refinance a car or truck to lower payments becomes very appealing.
AUTOPAY (autopay.com) is offering a marketing and fulfillment program for automobile refinancing. The program allows any lending institution to outsource the marketing of the program, which includes a calculation tool for customers/members to estimate their refinance savings, and an online portal for direct submission to your loan origination system (such as MeridianLink Consumer) for decision rules. This offer also includes delivery of completed loan package documents to facilitate direct onboarding to core. There is also optional outsourced fulfillment to handle each lending institution's resource and capacity needs.
EMERGENCY PERSONAL LOANS
With an increase in payroll cuts, layoffs, and unexpected expenses, customers and members are looking for ways to obtain cash to get them through the short-term (and hopefully this crisis is just that, short-term). With the closure of branches, it can be challenging to apply and get approval for emergency loans. And once approved, the funding of the loan can often be delayed as back-end processing is being performed by staff working remotely.
CuneXus (cunexus.com) offers borrowers an instant loan application process with perpetual access to preapproved loans. This digital program is based on a comprehensive lending pre-screening process for all types of consumer loans. This eliminates the hassles and obstacles to consumer lending including zero loan applications; no branch visit is required and eliminates the fear of rejection. This deepens your relationship with your customer or member and drives increased engagement.
AUTOMATED LOAN "RESETTING"
What if a lending institution could proactively help, even more so, delight its customers/members with a notification of savings on a consumer loan before the customer or member initiated the request? And, what if the whole process from time of digital notification to acceptance was under two minutes? In COVID-19 times, that could bring about a lot of smiles, satisfaction and stress relief.
RateReset (ratereset.com) offers its clients a way to be proactive on retention of loan portfolios. This automated process starts with the lending institution querying their loans to see who would be eligible for a reset offer. The offer is then sent to the consumer digitally using propriety marketing channels; the consumer can digitally review, sign and accept the offer in less than 90 seconds. The accepted offers are then funneled back to the lender's core. RateReset also offers pre-approval options that integrate directly into the lending institution's LOS-loan origination system (again, such as MeridianLink Consumer).
RAPID DEPLOYMENT
Already having a seamless integration process in place with these three vendors as well as hundreds more requires a robust API to your loan origination platform. The ability to rapidly deploy access to these vendors to get your offering to your customers/members is crucial as competitors are already marketing their options to everyone. MeridianLink offers that capability to its clients. While it is up to each vendor partner to install and implement their product or service, we pride ourselves on enabling the connectivity between a vendor partner solution and our products as quickly and accurately as possible.
As lending institutions look for ways to quickly show customers and members they care with not just words but actions, consider leveraging one of MeridianLink’s vendor partner as a solution. Contact us at salessupport@meridianlink.com to find out more about AUTOPAY, CuneXus, or RateReset offerings as well as the other companies that form the MeridianLink network of third-party vendors.
