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Mar 17
office

Construct – Construction Loan Management

By Blog

Construction Loan Management to Help You Build a Better Bank

Years ago, lenders used spreadsheets and manually entered calculations in order to keep up with the complex and tedious details of each and every construction loan they managed. It could take days to receive inspection details and approve draw requests. Fast forward to today, where bankers have custom reports at their fingertips and inspections can submit details from the construction site.

We created BankLabs Construct to streamline the construction loan management process, so bankers could spend less time on spreadsheets and get back to serving their communities. With automated draw exports, budget calculations, and inspections, bankers are adding days of interest income back to each draw. At the same time, bankers are seeing a stronger relationship with borrowers, builders, and other stakeholders that appreciate having an efficient, easy digital solution to work with.

Construction Loan Management Process: How To Modernize and Streamline

The days of waiting a week for draw approvals and inspections are gone. Banks are now using construction loan management software like Construct to streamline their draw approval process. Our digital workflow accelerates draw cycle times, providing approvals days after than the manual process and can increase draw interest by 8-12%. 

Automated inspections also accelerate the draw approval process by instantly providing bankers with the information they need to fund a draw request quickly. This can add additional days of interest income to every draw. These features, combined with digital notifications, are helping over 150 banks streamline and modernize their construction loan management process today.

Manage Your Construction Loans Effectively

 

The amount of manual data entry needed to manage a construction loan portfolio can be daunting, not to mention ineffective. Without constant analysis, problems can arise within a spreadsheet without an admin noticing. Construct uses budget and loan data imports to reduce the amount of time needed to enter data into the system. The ability to upload loan data into BankLabs Construct eliminates the need to manually re-enter information and reduces the risk of human error.

Our automatic budget calculations feature automatically calculates remaining budgets based on draws, further reducing the risk of human error and allows bankers to spend less time doing manual calculations. 

Construction Loan Management Benefits

Construction lending is a significant portion of many financial institutions’ portfolio. Construction loan management tool benefits include:

– Maximizing ROI by taking days off of your turn-around time.

– Mitigating risk by providing detailed audit trails and real time alerts. Spreadsheets can’t alert you when a loan is overfunded.

– Improving the experience with borrowers, builders, and other stakeholders by offering an easy-to-use mobile solution.

Construction Loan Management Reports

One of the best features of a construction loan management tool is that it provides a detailed audit trail for each property and real-time reporting for an institution’s construction loan portfolio. This allows for efficient and informed oversight from an executive level. One of the most popular features of Construct is our custom reporting feature. At the click of a button, this automated feature provides a real-time look at a bank’s construction portfolio, decreasing risk and helping institutions make faster business decisions. 

Mitigate Risk and Optimize Construction Lending

Construction lending, traditionally a high-risk industry, is ripe for change and digital transformation. Our tool maximizes risk mitigation for our clients. In fact, auditors love us! Construct helps reduce risk by providing a detailed audit trail and real time alerts to users. You have 24/7 access to loan monitoring on any mobile device.

Construct – Leading Construction Loan Management Software

Struggling to manage your construction loans? We’ve got a solution! Construct is the industry-leading Construction Loan Management Software, providing construction lenders and contractors with a streamlined system allowing them to manage their loans and projects. With a suite of tools, Construct helps you minimize risk while making the most of opportunities.

The construction industry is one of the most profitable industries in the US and it’s only getting bigger. Unfortunately, it can be time-consuming and manual for lenders, especially as a financial institution grows. Construct solves this by automating the workflow, providing real-time analytics, and helping avoid costly mistakes.

Mar 07
loan management

Construction Loan Monitoring and Why You Need It

By Blog

What is Construction Loan Monitoring and Why is it Important?

Construction loan monitoring is the process of reviewing and monitoring a construction loan to ensure that it is being paid in a timely manner.

Construction loans are typically loans that are taken out for the construction of a building, which need to be repaid in full after the completion of the project. Construction loan monitoring ensures that these construction loans are being repaid on time and will not negatively affect the borrower’s credit rating.

Construction financing is often considered to be one of the most risky types of lending because it relies on future income and assets. This type of financing usually has higher interest rates than other types of lending but also has more lenient repayment schedules and terms.

Construction loans are a type of financing that allows developers to build homes and other buildings. Construction loan monitoring is an important part of construction loans because it helps ensure that the developer does not default on the loan.

Defaulting on a construction loan can be catastrophic for both parties involved. The developer could lose access to their funds, which will make it difficult to complete their project. The lender will also suffer from a loss in revenue, which they might not be able to recover from.

How to Choose the Right Construction Loan Monitor for Your Company

In the construction industry, there are many different types of loan monitors and lenders. It can be daunting to find the right one for your company.

The right construction loan monitoring tool can increase efficiency while reducing errors. It can provide a detailed audit trail and custom reporting. The best construction financing monitor will give you all of this information in an easy-to-read format.

Banklabs Construct brings all your loans under one roof and gives you a complete overview of your portfolio. It calculates your risk exposure, provides alerts on delinquent loans, and keeps you updated on changes in interest rates. With all parties on the same page, Construct reduces risk while increasing cycle times, leading to fewer losses and greater gains.

 

5 Construction Loan Monitoring Best Practices

When it comes to construction finance, there are a number of best practices that can be followed. These practices will help in the monitoring of construction loans and the process of securing them.

These 5 tips will help you monitor your construction loans more efficiently:

  1. Make sure your process has risk monitoring checks throughout the process
  2. Increase your staff capacity with modern technology
  3. Have reporting capability on hand at all times
  4. Store documents all in one place for easy monitoring
  5. Automate as much of the manual process as possible to reduce errors

How Construct Loan Monitoring Software can Help You Save Money While Raising Awareness of Risks

Construction loan monitoring helps you save money in a variety of ways. It helps you save money by catching any problems with your contractor before they become costly problems that can’t be fixed. It also saves you money by preventing unnecessary change orders and by catching any errors before they happen. Alerts take the guesswork out of your lending process.

In addition to saving you money, construction loan monitoring also serves as an awareness tool for risks. When done properly, it can help identify risks and vulnerabilities in your project so that they can be mitigated ahead of time. 

Other construction lending process risks include:

  • Project Delays
  • Overfunding
  • Unnecessary line items
  • Delayed timeline

By carefully monitoring the project process and receiving overfunding alerts and notifications, lenders can catch mistakes before they become a problem.

What are the Benefits of Loan Monitoring Services?

Construction loan monitoring is an important aspect of construction lending. 

The benefits of construction loan monitoring include:

– Ensuring timely repayment

– Protecting lender’s interest

– Ensuring that the project is completed on time and within budget

What is the Best Way to Monitor a Construction Loan in the New World of Digital Technologies?

Construction loans are complex, and the best way to manage them is to make sure that you have a system in place.

Monitoring construction loans is not an easy task. It requires a lot of know-how and experience, which can be hard for some people to come by.

As the world of digital finance continues to grow, the need for a new type of construction loan system is arising. Construct is an innovative and simple solution for this growing need. The platform provides transparency and control for both lenders and borrowers as it tracks the loans in real-time. A unique and highly secure process, Construct helps to better manage risk. As a result, it is easier for companies to grow their business with less risk involved.

 

Expediting Draw Processing through Construction Loan Monitoring

Monitoring your construction loan is very important because it will help you stay on top of any changes in your financial status and manage your assets and liabilities more effectively.

The construction loan monitoring process is an important part of the entire construction finance process. Construction loans are often complex and involve a lot of moving parts. As a financial institution grows it’s construction portfolio, manual monitoring can extend the draw process time to an unhealthy level. A monitoring tool will use automation to cut the manual time down and expedite your draw process timeline, leading ultimately to more funding.

 

Dec 09
man working at desk

BankLabs Announces Participate, the Social Network for Bankers

By Uncategorized

Little Rock, Arkansas (December 9, 2021)—BankLabs is excited to announce Participate, the first patented loan participation and balance sheet management tool for community banks that brings buyers and sellers of loan participations onto a single platform. “Participate democratizes the lending process for community banks,” says Mike Montgomery, Chairman and CEO of BankLabs.

For new participations, Participate’s digital workflow makes participations faster and easier to do, enabling transactions to be done in less than 2 weeks, in some cases. Commercial sales began in December 2020 and over 70 banks are already on the platform today. “Participate is our fastest growing ‘friendly fintech’ tool to date,” says Matt Johnner, President at BankLabs.

With over $100 million of loans transacted in October alone, Participate is being used to increase liquidity, manage balance sheets and increase fee and interest income. “For banks looking to grow their loan portfolio, increase fee and interest income, and reduce risk, this is the perfect tool to do that,” says Chris Wewers, CFO at Southern Bancorp.

In addition to buying and selling new loans via Participate, banks are using the tool to manage over $1.8 billion in loan participations. For existing loans, Participate tracks loan information, pro-rata shares, documents, interest rates, funding and payment transaction details, and automatically notifies participants when there is an update, replacing what is typically a manual process with modern, mobile automation.

About BankLabs
BankLabs provides community banks with state-of-the-art technologies that help increase efficiency, improve profitability, and enhance in-market relationships. BankLabs is committed to creating platforms that streamline loan processes for banks so you can get back to what really matters – serving your customers and your community. BankLabs’ flagship product, Construct, is a construction loan automation solution serving over 140 banks to date.

To request a demo, please contact sales@banklabs.com or visit www.BankLabs.com

For more information, press contact:
Felecia Hancock
479-283-1835
Felecia.Hancock@BankLabs.com
www.BankLabs.com
www.LinkedIn.com/BankLabs

Nov 17
business meet

Matt Johnner presents on Balance Sheet Management Strategies at WBA

By Insights

BankLabs President Matt Johnner presented at the Western Bankers Association CCO and Lenders conference. His presentation called “Balance Sheet Management Strategies to Improve Loan Profit” discussed the many difficulties facing bankers today, including NIM compression, lower interest rates, and lack of quality loans. Banks are looking for ways to earn non-interest fee income.

One of the strategies many banks are using is loan participations. Some of the benefits of origination a loan and seeking participants is a reduction in concentration risk and diversify a portfolio. Other banks take loans above limit and find participants as a strategy to keep clients and increase fee income.

Benefits of being a loan participant are diversifying a portfolio, increasing interest income, balance sheet management, and putting access funds to work earning.

Many banks are utilizing our loan participation software to accomplish all of these needs, and to accomplish them in less time and with greater easy. Having a mobile tool to streamline and speed up your loan participation process makes this an effortless solution. Participate can be used anywhere from any mobile device. Over 70 banks area already on the platform today, reaping benefits.

Nov 13
loan participation automation

BankLabs participates in CBDA Peer Forum discussing loan participation automation

By Insights

We are proud to support the CDBA peer forum this year and enjoyed joining the conversation between community development bank execs and leading community development finance experts. Events like this that lead to relationship building, innovation, and policy discussions are vital to the future of the industry.

Thanks to Chris Wewers for his comments at the CBDA peer forum today on how Southern Bancorp uses our loan participation platform. From Chris: “We are using Participate to manage the liquidity we have today. When we get the incoming US Treasury funds, we are going to be looking for opportunities to expand relationships across the CDBA network as well as expand our digital footprint using this tool.”

Community Development Bankers Association (CDBA) is the national trade association of the community development bank sector. They are the voice and champion of banks and thrifts with a mission of serving low and moderate income communities.

 

Jul 27
Arkansas Business Article about BankLabs

Arkansas Business: ‘Friendly’ Fintech BankLabs Helps With Lending

By Article, Insights

‘Friendly’ Fintech BankLabs Helps With Lending

by Sarah Campbell-Miller on July 26th 2021

 

BankLabs of Little Rock will graduate from this year’s FIS Fintech Accelerator in August as it adds employees and works on a new software product designed to automate agricultural lending for banks.

BankLabs was the only Arkansas company selected from 148 applicants across 31 countries to participate in the program, which is sponsored by financial technology giant FIS of Jacksonville, Florida, and the state of Arkansas and hosted by the Venture Center of Little Rock.

“We like to call ourselves friendly fintech. The reason we use that term is we’re helping banks around the country, regardless of size, defend against the disruptive fintechs,” Matt Johnner, BankLabs president and co-founder, told Arkansas Business. “We’re the friendly fintech that helps the banks deploy additional lending solutions, including some more forward-thinking things, like allowing different companies to make loans to each other, but still benefiting the bank.”

The company was founded in 2016 and employs about 30 people. It’s hiring another 16 over the next year, he said. “We are really at a point of acceleration, or a tipping point. We’ve signed over 130 banks in the first five years. We’ve now built a great foundation,” Johnner said. “And so now it’s time to go to the next level. We’d like to double our revenue in this coming year. And then double the year after that; we just closed our first outside funding round with some great individual investors.”

He declined to disclose the company’s annual revenue, but said it raised more than the $3 million it sought from the funding round. BankLabs isn’t profitable yet. It “could be profitable in less than one year, but that would sacrifice growth,” Johnner said. He added that he was not building the company to sell it.

Johnner said BankLabs aims to be a company that has a multi-product portfolio heavily focused on commercial lending and is profitable in the long run. “We will continue to evaluate opportunities. We have had some folks try to acquire us already, and we just determined it wasn’t the right time,” he said.

For now, BankLabs has two main products, Construct and Participate. The company’s new agricultural lending product is unnamed and in the “ideation phase,” Johnner said.

Construct is software that automates construction lending for lenders to make that process — traditionally accomplished with spreadsheets and other paper documents — more profitable and efficient. The automation also reduces risk by providing real-time alerts to lenders.

Participate is software that automates lending between lenders. For example, a small bank that has a loan limit of $6 million could use it to lend $15 million to a borrower, with the additional $9 million participation coming from a partner bank, Johnner said. The software “automates the whole digital lending flow and has a marketplace component to it, to find new partners if that bank doesn’t have enough partners already,” he said.

BankLabs’s goals include signing more banks up for its products and building out the network effect of Participate. “So, if you’re a bank in Arkansas and you have, let’s say, 10 or 15 loan participations on your balance sheet, you might also have 10 unique banks that have bought one or more of those from you,” Johnner said. “And so what we do is we try to leverage that network effect, … give free access to [the] 10 downstream banks. And then we lovingly land and expand and try to upsell them.”

In addition, BankLabs touts experience in banking and technology from both Johnner and its co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mike Montgomery.

Johnner was an oilfield engineer before he joined Perot Systems Corp., which is now Dell Information Services, in 1994. After that, he worked for numerous technology companies.

Johnner said Montgomery is a third-generation banker who has invested in more than 20 community banks around the country and serves on the board of Southern Bancorp in Arkadelphia. Montgomery was also an executive at Systematics Inc., the Arkansas-based predecessor of FIS. Johnner called his partner’s past experience “fintech 1.0.”

“We’re trying to help Arkansas expand its economy and bring high-paying jobs back to Arkansas, through what we would call fintech 2.0,” he said. “This is a great time of consolidation for banks. It’s a great threat to banks that don’t innovate. So we seek out and welcome banks that are looking for digital innovation and defense against the bad guys.”

 

 

Read original article here

Jul 09
Arkansas Money and Politics features BankLabs

Arkansas Money and Politics: BankLabs Aiming to Further Disrupt Commercial Lending Space

By Article, Insights

“Matt Johnner, BankLabs Aiming to Further Disrupt Commercial Lending Space”

by Carl Kozlowski in Arkansas Money and Politics,

Matt Johnner is no stranger to taking on challenges. He worked as a drilling fluid engineer in the oil and gas industry in such far-flung locales as Nigeria, Yemen and Dubai before entering the business world as a top-level software developer for the famous Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot at Perot Systems.

From there, the 50-year-old New York native gained a vast amount of experience by leapfrogging across several startup and small-stage companies, eventually working for Texas tech giant Morton Myerson. So, when he got the call from Mike Montgomery to join the financing company Radius Group in 2013, he jumped at the chance to start a journey that led to the founding of BankLabs in 2016, where he serves as president to this day.

BankLabs is a multi-product company that helps banks compete with “disruptive fintechs” and large international banks by automating lending. Their products help banks work on loans together when they’re too large for just one bank to handle, thus minimizing the concentration risk while replacing the inefficient, traditional process for handling loans.

The impressive results include being picked as one of just 10 companies from across the United States and 29 other countries to be part of the 2021 FIS Fintech Accelerator at The Venture Center in Little Rock. Johnner hopes participation in the accelerator will help his team grow Banklab’s Participate program.

“We started with a product called Construct, which automated construction lending, and now Participate is a balance-sheet management tool for banks used to sell off pieces of loans they already have and sell them at a premium to increase loan profit and reduce concentration risk,” he explained. “We think this can also create a whole new digital-lending channel and allow merchants to make loans to other merchants.”

Johnner posits an example in which a lumber yard has a small-to-medium size business client that buys $500,000 worth of lumber each year.

“That client needs lower financing costs than a credit card’s 21 percent. We see a day where Participate facilitates a loan between the lumber yard and a carpentry business at a much lower rate, say 5 percent,” said Johnner. “And we execute on our mission to help banks and be a friendly fintech and allow the banks in our universe or our partner’s universe like FIS to put the loans on bank balance sheets in our network.

“We see a day where the lumber yards, mills and manufacturers are getting loans from their suppliers and the suppliers are keeping loyal customers, maybe making a little bit of money on the loan, and then the loan goes on the bank’s balance sheet. It’s a version of buy now, pay later. We’ll see. Most people think we’re a little crazy, but we always think that’s a good thing.”

Participate follows the success of BankLabs’ Construct program, which aimed to create big changes in the annual $1.3 trillion construction loans marketplace. Construct’s +Pay feature automated the construction payment stream for builders, general contractors, banks, title companies or disbursement agents that pay subcontractors.

Builders and banks benefit from the resulting faster process that eliminated paper with electronic lien waivers and invoices, while builders got automated 1099 reporting and project accounting. Subcontractors receive same-day pay through its ACH feature, and all told, this makes +Pay and Construct the world’s first cloud-based, vertically integrated construction-funding platform.

Those innovative approaches have paid off with more than 100 bank clients such as CenterState, a $45 billion Florida-based bank; the $15 billion Plains Capital Bank based in Dallas; as well as smaller banks including the $500 million Valliance Bank in Oklahoma and north Texas. BankLabs’ work with CenterState increased its construction loan portfolio by 567 percent. Altogether, it has managed $37 billion worth of construction loans across 57,000 projects.

While Johnner is based at the firm’s offices in Dallas, it proudly counts Little Rock as its headquarters, building on the tradition of other giants including Systematics and Alltel.  The company currently has 30 employees but is looking to add 16 more staffers in the next six to nine months in the fields of software engineers, sales and customer-satisfaction specialists.

“Our goal is to differentiate the financial institutions that are not happy with the status quo from those that are resistant to change,” Johnner said. “Our clients want new ways to do things that leverage their strengths. We’re at a huge transition point and have a huge runway ahead of us and that’s only possible through great team.”

 

Read article on source website here

May 25
Los Angeles Times article

Construction Loan Automation Mitigates Risk

By Article
Mitigate Risk with Construction Loan Automation

According to this survey published by American Bankers Association, 46% of respondents cited staffing and 42% cited regulatory and compliance costs as the top drivers of expenses in construction lending. We get it, working to comply with regulations can increase costs. More man powers equals higher costs. One way top Financial Institutions are combatting this growing cost is by automating some of their processes and making sure their reporting is all in one place.

How FIs are getting this done

How are they accomplishing this? With loan automation solutions like Construct. With real-time reporting and alerts, officers know right away when there is an issue needing attention, they don’t have to wait for an email. Detailed audit trails makes reporting easy. The better informed a financial institution is, the better protected they are. Plus, those at-risk loan alerts saves bankers money in the long run.

Auditors love it

Auditors love the custom reporting features. Being able to pull data at any time, anywhere, really makes a difference when looking at compliance. Custom reporting makes it easy for your institution to build exactly what you need, nothing more and nothing less, every time. The 24/7 access really helps stakeholders to complete jobs faster. Instead of waiting to get back to the office to type up notes, inspectors can enter details and photos into the system on site. Setting up alerts means you can get an alert the moment job details are entered so you can take the next steps immediately, rather than waiting on a UPS package or an email with attachments to come through.

Our construction lending automation software is helping over 130 banks effortlessly prepare for audits while mitigating risk. Time stamps and detailed information from all parties puts management at ease. Details can be stored on this cloud based software and easily referenced later.

 

 

May 13
shaking hands

Participations Made Easy: Loan Participation Software

By Insights

BankLabs is revolutionizing the traditionally slow participation process with Participate, the first end-to-end loan participation software for both originators and participants.

Participate is a single platform to manage all loan participations, existing or new, bought or sold. It allows originators and participants to digitize and share loan info, documents, and automate workflow.

Whether its large loans or smaller ones, done with existing partners or new, Participate can cut weeks off the traditionally slow origination process, giving your bank the additional liquidity and flexibility needed to maximize profits.

See how to use automation to increase loan participations here.

Save Time and Lower Expenses

Looking to find the right participant partners? Participate eliminates the need for phone calls and back and forth emails. Just choose who you want to partner with and let Participate do the rest, including electronic NDA’s and non-compete agreements.

Once the agreements are in place, the document repository gives originators and participants easy access to documents and underwriting information, eliminating the need for overnight packages, couriers and drop boxes.

From origination through closing, Participate’s digital workflow includes notifications, electronic document exchange and e-signature, keeping everyone updated and taking weeks off an otherwise cumbersome process.

Back Office Management

Once loans are closed, Participate records the transaction history for each loan, along with the pro-rata share for each party. It also notifies each participant when funds are requested or disbursed, keeping everyone on the same page in terms of dates, amounts and interest accruals.

The document repository has built in reminders for when documents need to be updated, and automatic notifications to downstream participants when new documents are added.

Custom reports are easy to build and can be created by loan type, bought vs sold, maturity date, interest rate, etc., all exportable to excel.

Fine Tune Your Balance Sheet

Whether it’s originating new loans or participating out existing ones, Participate streamlines the process so deals are faster and easier to do, allowing for more liquidity and flexibility when it comes to managing your balance sheet. Loan participation software is your answer.

Loan Participation Software

participations made easy

 

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