In this example, Heritage Bank of America is a commercial construction lender with a $500M portfolio. They manage dozens of loans and the deluge of administrative tasks related to draw requests. For example, within a single draw disbursement request submitted to to the bank, a real estate development manager pulls together 100’s of legal and compliance-related documents including lien releases, invoices, the AIA G702, the AIA G703, receipts, change orders, inspection reports, approvals, and more. Each draw request requires the approval of several parties including but not limited to the loan administrator, third party inspector, title company, and other loan participants. The entire process applies to each individual loan and is core to construction loan management.
Historically, due to flexibility and familiarity, a massive spreadsheet has been Heritage’s construction loan administration tool of choice for years. However, the risk of potential errors and manual overload have often been overlooked.
Challenge
In addition to the tedium of manual work, spreadsheets do not aggregate project data and notify lenders of potential risks based on historical information. With an excess of documentation flying around in PDFs, emails, and Excel spreadsheets, it is often difficult to know precisely where an approval, loan status, lien release, or draw is in the process.
With the volume of work involved in administering their portfolio of loans, the bank embraced the benefits of modern machine learning and process automation found in construction loan software to improve their management of construction loans.
Solution
Through a combination of optical character recognition, machine learning algorithms, and rule-based predictive modeling, loan management software parses the information from the countless emails and PDFs included within a construction loan draw request. It analyzes the data and performs “checks” to identify errors and alerts humans to any discrepancies.
During the next 24 months, expect more companies to embrace the no-collar workforce by redesigning jobs and reimagining how work gets done in a hybrid human-and-machine environment, automating repetitive tasks and augmenting human performance. – QZ, The Tech Trends to Watch in 2018
A process that had taken hours of human interpretation is now done in seconds. With all of their loan information in one location, the construction loan administrators now quickly generate project- and portfolio-level reports like loan composition, cash flow projections, draw processing, and missing lien releases. Moreover, they have access to real-time information about payment status. This visibility allows both the lender and their borrowers to see who is being paid, and when.
Outcome
Deploying construction loan administration software led to more profitable loans, faster disbursements for borrowers and their contractors, fewer mechanic’s liens over non-payment disputes, and an opportunity for Heritage’s employees to spend time and effort on things that provide a greater sense of purpose and profits for the bank.
By aggregating and parsing the information from the countless emails and PDFs, machine learning and construction draw software has helped the bank quickly answer questions:
“Is this invoice for this project?”
“Has this invoice already been paid?”
“Is the invoice within the contract amount?”
“Is the project within budget?”
“Does the invoice have the correct documentation?”
“Is the project on schedule?”
Other examples of how construction loan software assisted the bank with the monthly draw request process include:
- The borrower, lender, inspector, architect, etc. all quickly track approvals and documents related to the monthly draw process. Coordinating and collecting the approvals have become much more efficient and approvals can now take place in the field by way of mobile applications.
- The use of a single software platform prevents data-entry duplication and manual entry like contractors transferring invoices from their subcontractors, developers transferring invoices from their contractors, and lenders transferring information from their borrowers.
- The bank distributes the appropriate amount of funds as quickly as possible while always ensuring that enough funds are remaining to complete the project and that lien releases are tied to fund disbursements.
- The bank not only tracks draw disbursements but also monitors the required interest to be billed each month and withholds those funds from the loan amount.
For an example of how a single error led to an undetected $46,000 draw overpayment, see our related case study. In addition to describing how the error occurred, we provide steps taken to “attempt” to remedy the situation and how construction loan management software prevents these types of errors from ever occurring in the first place.
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