From 3 deals at a time to 30, with the same team.

The introduction of the Main Street Loan Program caused widespread pipeline disruption. After the CARES Act passed in February 2020, banks were left confused and brokers like Cardinal Capital were fighting to process a huge volume of applications for a brand-new type of loan, without the structural support to do it efficiently.

Despite needing to close many more loans, process inefficiency, lengthy document trails and a lack of resource meant commercial finance brokers found it difficult to cover more than a handful of loans at a time. By September 2020, Cardinal Capital had 24 loans in processing but only one in closing.

They needed to retrieve detailed tax and financial documentation from customers, provide it to the banks, and get sign-off. At scale, with a new loan program the banks themselves did not fully understand, that was easier said than done. They had been using third-party tools like OneDrive, which turned out not to be fit for purpose.

Cardinal Capital had burned through various CRM systems and had yet to find one that worked. They needed a system that could consolidate their existing tech stack, stay flexible at scale, manage large volumes of customer data, and make communication with third parties easy.

It also had to offer heightened security to protect customer data, provide fast external file sharing, cut out time-consuming document chasing, and integrate with minimal disruption to how they already worked.

Developed in tandem by lawyers and investment bankers, Prodeal met the security standards of both the American Bar Association and the American Bankers Association. Lenders and banks had been sceptical of receiving links from third parties after repeated warnings from their IT departments, and that security posture gave them the confidence to proceed, which cut communication delays.

Time mattered. Already inundated with more applications than they could handle, Cardinal could not afford a system with a long learning phase. They were set up and competent within two hours of integration.

Their lending partners worked to a strict checklist of financial documentation, and retrieving all of it and getting it signed off was difficult at volume. Prodeal let Cardinal integrate those checklists so every party had a real-time view of where document retrieval and approval stood.

Instead of trawling email chains to find which submissions and approvals were outstanding, Cardinal had live document reporting and could share outstanding checklists directly with third parties.

Focus moved from document chasing back to client relationships and closing, and it showed in volume. Previously they felt swamped managing three deals at a time. Now they comfortably handle thirty, without growing the team.

Other wins: setup in a few hours with minimal disruption, lower costs from cutting back the stack of third-party tools, more efficient end-to-end processes, OneDrive replaced with a tool that works internally and externally, and security their lending partners could use with confidence.