Challenge

In the wake of COVID, many vulnerable businesses needed a lifeline. That help came in the form of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a federal loan designed to keep small business employees working during the pandemic. To participate in the program, businesses had to act fast. And to provide banking customers with the opportunity to be program lenders, Full Skope needed to move even faster. 

Most small banks don’t have the capacity or resources to develop loan origination software quickly. And without technology, banks would have to process loan applications manually, requiring demanding hours in exchange for low ROI. Most banks had two options: perform labor-intensive loan processing or miss the opportunity to be a PPP lender. 

Shifting requirements for PPP posed another big challenge. Rudy Navarro, CTO at Full Skope, said, “The program launched without parameters fully defined.” 

Rudy explained that as businesses began applying for loans, program terms and policies changed. People needed a way to continue their existing application without losing information they’d already shared. And any company developing a PPP loan product would have to adapt to frequent program requirement changes. Full Skope needed the ability to react to these developments quickly and efficiently. 

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Solution

Using Salesforce and Skuid, Full Skope built a web-based loan product that helps banks qualify and process PPP loans. The company partnered with Nymbus, who provided resources to manage the outsourced loan operations process and helped with lead generation.

Full Skope built the interface that borrowers use to apply for loans and the Nymbus loan operations team managed complex workflows and task assignments via the platform. Without SmartLenders, it would have been impossible to efficiently see the number of inbound loans through the process of underwriting and funding. 

Full Skope built the critical components to launch SmartLenders with two developers in three weeks, with all the customized lead intake and validation required for the Paycheck Protection Program. Full Skope continued to make enhancements to the product throughout the life of the PPP program. The platform includes:

• Custom messages with the latest updates on PPP.
• A place to upload all documents needed for loan applications. 
• A lookup to help businesses find their correct NAICS code out of thousands.
• A view that shows all the application elements after submission, which also allows users to update information if requested.
• Loan document generation.
• A chat feature banks use to provide guidance and loan e-signature options for applicants.
  

When PPP ran out of money, businesses continued to apply and the SmartLenders platform held applications in queue until the program was funded again. When program conditions changed, Full Skope kept pace with new requirements by adding more criteria to the application. Applicants could also select indicators showing they had provided documents in a previous session, saving them time and rework when updating their submission.

“Skuid allows us to iterate at the drop of a hat,” said Doug Hogan, CEO at Full Skope. “This program didn’t launch with a lot of information and requirements changed frequently. We were learning so much and the fact that Skuid helped us adapt in real-time has been a huge benefit.”

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Results

Full Skope exited the beta version of its loan product at the end of April. In less than a month, the platform went from having seven bank users and no bank customer users to 100 bank users and 3,500 to 4,000 bank customer users. Nearly 4,000 of the applications processed led to more than $250,000,000 in disbursed loans to small businesses.

Doug said, “The big thing that Skuid helped us do is present a different brand altogether in a multi-tenant environment. Just by updating a couple of values within a brand record in Salesforce, we’re able to change the entire look and feel of the site, which is really nice.” 

Today, Nymbus has a core banking system but no loan origination software. Full Skope will build a second version of the PPP loan product exclusive to the Nymbus platform to serve financial institutions with assets over $500 million.