Nowadays, more and more people are choosing to apply for a loan from Alternative Lending companies over traditional lending like banks or credit unions. The reasons are not only for their low or sometimes noncredit scores requirements but also due to their fast approval time. This is the case for Peer to Peer lending companies. These online marketplaces connect borrowers with interested lenders in a transaction that takes place directly in an online P2P loan software platform.
Even though these peer-to-peer loan platforms offer many advantages for borrowers and lenders likewise, such as high returns for lenders, lower interest for borrowers, timesaving, significantly less documentation, and more, it also brings high risks, especially for lenders due to the platform’s incomplete security and their inability to filter sketchy borrowers completely.
To create a P2P lending website, you need to be aware of some of the challenges that come with it and how a CRM like Salesforce can provide solutions to these challenges to build a solid and scalable peer to peer loan software.
P2P Loan Software Challenges
Peer-to-peer lending platforms are great options for borrowers interested in borrowing funds but have low credit scores or belong to the low-income category and for people who have some money to invest/lend that would earn them interest. It is also convenient as the transaction takes place through a website or platform, eliminating the need for financial institutions as the middleman.
But as these lending platforms come in handy for personal loans, health treatment, business, and more, they are also very risky and challenging. Let’s review some of the challenges that come with building P2P loan software.
Reporting data records.
Peer to peer loan platforms receive thousands of applications a day, and one of the upsides of these lending spaces is that hundreds of separate lenders can fund one loan to minimize the risk of investing, but this also originates that one single loan could generate thousands of records. Managing all this data can be incredibly challenging.
Onboarding customers.
Keeping track of onboarding processes and making sure customers feel comfortable and respected is essential for every business. However, it is challenging to follow on the thousands of customers digital lenders assess daily if you don’t have a robust CRM to help you with these applications.
Highly competitive.
Millennial customers are the current and future loan applicants, and they move around the digital space as if they were born for it; moreover, during the pandemic, digital lending gained more popularity, bringing more competition to the alternative lending sector. So, to stand out in this space, your P2P loan software needs to be highly efficient and customer-focused.
Cybersecurity.
Lending marketplaces manage tons of critical private data from borrowers and lenders. It is crucial to incorporate security practices to help maintain the protection of this information.
Borrowers’ defaults.
As these alternative loans are very appealing and open to borrowers with low credit scores or low income, you must take measures to determine the creditworthiness of borrowers and assign them to different risk buckets. Still, there is a risk that some borrowers won’t be able to pay the loan. P2P loan platforms must build a system to avoid, mitigate or manage the risks of defaults so that lenders can feel more confident in your software’s reputation and trustworthiness.
Application development.
As you know, without a modern, up-to-date platform that can handle multiple integrations, your team can spend a significant amount of time accessing information from different applications, making manual errors while filling forms or with redundant tasks, which can’t help you much with nurturing for borrowers and lenders.
Loan inquiries and screening automation.
Without the automation of the inquiry capturing process and screening, the sales team wastes precious time on non-qualified inquiries and leads. To empower your sales team to be more productive, you need to ensure that only qualified leads enter your funnel.
Benefits of Salesforce for Peer to peer loan software
Customers’ journeys are a high priority for any organization. For P2P lending platforms to be able to offer the best experience to customers while handling most of the challenges this industry faces, they need to use CRM software that can manage Alternative Lending and be personalized to fit their workflow, providing a seamless experience to borrowers and lenders. Salesforce products and platform can help you build P2P loan software that is efficient and offers an exceptional lending service.
Let’s check some of the benefits you can bring to your lending platform by using Salesforce as your Customer Relationship Management software.
1-Design your own process
One of the most notable features Salesforce offers is the ability to design a customizable and scalable platform. Every lending platform is unique and manages its processes in its own way. Salesforce platform helps businesses develop their own processes for a seamless customer experience, create smart and dynamic forms to process requests faster and more accurately, improve usability for both operators and customers, and adapt Salesforce to your customer experience requirements as the business grows.
2-Create automated workflows
Salesforce allows your organization to automate the borrower journey from loan inquiries, applications, and screening to funding and collection. Your team can capture loan inquiries from the web and other platforms, improve the screening process for more efficiency, distribute loan inquiries faster and assign them to different members of your sales team based on various filters like location, amount, and loan type, among others; you can also create monthly reminders for payments, alert collection if the borrower is not paying, and reduce time-consuming manual efforts.
3-Single source of truth
Salesforce’s ease of use facilitates the sync of popular business applications like QuickBooks, DocuSign, and other integrations with the platform, supporting your team in solving issues faster and providing a single source of truth to handle every step of your loan process without ever leaving the platform. Your reps will be able to work smarter and more efficiently and handle deals faster. You can provide operators with an interface to visualize all relevant data and finally create an innovative digital lending platform to stay ahead of your competitors.
4- Access Data in Real-Time
By visualizing every relevant data in one single screen interface, you can access data in real-time from any source. Use Tableau to bring the data together in Salesforce to build dashboards, track KPIs, and adjust processes based on this. You can also ensure your customers’ data is protected, keep track of onboarding processes, and get analytical insights to take immediate action.
5- Eliminate unreliable borrowers
One of the biggest concerns for investors is the lack of transparency when it comes to risk assessment. To mitigate the risks of borrowers’ default, you can customize and automate applicants screening to add more filters for ID verification, review the financial situation, request financial documents, and more. Also, you can create email reminders of the payment day for borrowers.
6- Provides more Security
Use security practices, Salesforce AI, and analytic insights to predict potential defaulters and flag them, as well as predict potential security breaches and fraud. Show investors that you care about the transparency and reputation of your platform.
7- Management and servicing
Management and servicing of loans are very important for peer to peer loan software. The Salesforce platform helps your organization handle common lead management tasks, manage users, record history, manage collection and distribution of payment to lenders for the specific loan, and facilitate nurturing for borrowers and lenders with email marketing.
8- Build Better Relationships
By using an efficient CRM for your Alternative lending company, you can create a buyer’s journey that would nurture your customers, building a better relationship with them. With Salesforce, you can store up-to-date and insightful contact data, documents, transactions, emails, and more, allowing your employees an easy way to find the information they need to increase their sales and grow your business.
9- Stay Connected
Salesforce mobile CRM helps companies stay connected even when they are not in the office. Your sales reps can access information and never miss important notifications that can help establish trust with your customers, build confidence in your brand, and increase your team’s productivity from anywhere they work.
In Short
If your goal is to beat all the other competitors in the Alternative Lending game, then you need to upgrade your P2P loan software with a CRM that can be customized to your specific needs and can handle the hundreds of applications submitted to your platform, and Salesforce can help you with that.
Furthermore, in Salesforce AppExchange, you can find accelerators that will give you the push you need towards your goal or find a Salesforce consulting company with expertise in the Alternative Lending Industry like Cloudsquare to architect the most robust, elegant, and scalable solutions specially designed for your business needs.
Contact one of our talented Salesforce consultants, discover how our solutions can put you ahead of the game, and subscribe to our blog to keep up with more Salesforce tips, insights, and news.