A leading equipment finance and leasing company in the US was significantly outpacing its peers on lending volumes. Yet, it was still able to see 70% cost savings and cut the turnaround time on processing loan applications from 48 hours to less than 4 hours.
But, just like in all other industries over recent years, the company was faced with staffing shortages and labor challenges that were limiting its growth potential.
In efforts to transform its labor stack and the culture of its entire organization, the company knew it needed to take a different approach to its staffing needs.
Amid these significant staffing headwinds, how was the company able to cut its turnaround times to a fraction of what they once were and grow capacity? How were they able to do so while improving their profitability?
Continue reading below to explore how this company solved its staffing problems and found significant cost savings by outsourcing a portion of its workflows to Assivo.
The company was experiencing a period of strong and sustained growth. However, it was dealing with staffing headwinds as it struggled to attract and retain qualified talent in its area.
Based in a major US coastal metro area, it became increasingly difficult for the team to find reliable and qualified individuals to process the rising volume of loan applications. Namely, the company struggled with the retention of its in-house team. Talent would leave after just 6-9 months on the job, after the client had already made significant investments in their training and development.
With the workforce that remained, the company had ongoing issues with punctuality and attendance, meaning they didn’t have a reliable team that they could count on to process their growing lending volumes.
It wasn’t long before the client recognized that talent was becoming a clear bottleneck to its growth. It started evaluating various outsourcing firms shortly after, looking to supplement its labor with a more experienced and reliable team and end the revolving door of recruitment that it had been dealing with.
Assivo was able to overhaul the client’s staffing solutions, helping them move to a work model where the US team comes into the office each morning to completed work from the Assivo India team, which has accuracy rates of 99.9%. With this extra time freed up, the US team follows up with borrowers, checks Assivo’s work, and approves it.
We initially staffed 6 Assivo associates to reduce bottlenecks and reinforce the client’s labor stack to handle more capacity on the application processing side. But, their executive team soon recognized that their labor challenges extended beyond this workflow to finance and accounting, loan servicing, compliance, and more. Thus, they rolled out Assivo through each of these functional areas; we now have about 6 individuals working in each area, and a total of 24 individuals total on the account.
Our team quickly began working across the entire lending process. Throughout our engagement, Assivo has removed bottlenecks, while allowing the client to continue using the proprietary technology it had developed.
All in all, the client simply was looking for a more reliable workforce and wanted to retain control over its technology stack.
They had invested millions of dollars into their technology infrastructure over the past 5-10 years, so they had no desire to update or change out their tech stack. Other outsourcing solutions they consulted with previously wanted to control and change their processes, like adopting their own technology and software platforms, but this is not something the client was willing or interested in doing.
Instead, our team at Assivo took strides to learn all the client’s existing proprietary software and created a comprehensive training program for each function and department to consult going forward. This meant the clients only trained Assivo on their technology once, and we now fully manage these processes to this day.
By working with Assivo, management was able to retain full control over their technology infrastructure, including full control over the parameters and criteria used in their lending process, in addition to the tools and platforms utilized throughout the process.
After the initial engagement, the client quickly saw benefits across multiple facets of their business, owing to the outsourced work of Assivo and their better labor management.
On the cost side, the client was able to cut costs by 70%, while still producing more capacity than they were able to before. By reducing their need for in-house loan processors, the client could save on expensive hiring, onboarding, and training costs, retaining only their best staff to perform core duties.
Further, our engagement has led to more competitive turnaround times for the client, and they now boast one of the most responsive loan processing times in the industry. To get into the specifics–previously they processed loans with a 48-hour turnaround time, which was only slipping to longer and longer lengths as they struggled with staffing issues.
But, after Assivo expanded the client’s operations and optimized the loan processing workflows, the client started to see turnaround times of under 4 hours.
By partnering with Assivo, the client was able to lessen its reliance on its local workforce, increase capacity, and make significant cost savings, unlocking efficiencies they didn’t think were possible before.
