SIMON^® is a secure, cloud-based, intelligent work management platform for lending. As a central front office to back office hub, SIMON^® ensures accurate, consistent, and streamlined communication and sharing of information, status, and documents. SIMON^® accelerates loan delivery and ensures that all the detailed work, individual tasks, critical dates, assignments, and regulatory and bank policy requirements are intelligently determined, calculated, managed, tracked, and reported.

SIMON^® is the tool that empowers forward-thinking lenders looking for a better way to scale.

SIMON^® is for banks that seek to add more loans to their portfolio without increasing commensurate human capital costs, allowing them to scale. In a world of heightened competition and new risks and regulations, SIMON^®‘s intelligence does not make mistakes.

With SIMON^®, commercial and consumer loan requirements and bank policies are identified and enforced from the beginning. There’s no need for a human battalion checking the checkers. SIMON^® centrally identifies, monitors, records, and tracks all work, and gives the entire team immediate visibility into the status of each loan. SIMON^® eliminates the unnecessary manual work of commercial lending and streamlines operations for greater compliance and adherence to regulations and bank policy. In short, SIMON^® promises simultaneously to decrease human capital costs and gain confidence by delivering error free and fully compliant loans.

The technology of SIMON^® is akin to that of Uber, the ride-sharing company. With Uber, the technology runs in the background, and automates and connects the complexity of the physical world of cars, drivers, and travelers. The “intelligence” instantaneously and seamlessly coordinates customers, cars and drivers, locations, payments, and optimal routing.

The technology of SIMON^® solves a similar problem. 

SIMON^® manages the entire, human-dependent loan process. The software instantly determines which unique set of requirements must be satisfied for each type of loan, by whom, and by when. The software also assigns tasks to each person, directing him or her to the next job. SIMON^® integrates the world of products, entities, and collateral with rules, officers, loan administrators, analysts, processors, servicing, supervisors, and managers.

A platform is like a single brain that monitors and directs the entire loan process. The “brain” is aware of all that is happening and all the lending activities.

SIMON^®, as an intelligent collaboration platform, coordinates the people, processes, rules, and dynamics to a loan that is sourced, underwritten, approved, booked, serviced, renewed, and paid off. As a platform, it works in tandem with a bank’s CRM, LOS, DocPrep, Spreading, Imaging and Core Systems to ensure each solution is utilized correctly and at the right times. It works with the loan through its entire life cycle and crosses all departmental barriers, resulting in less work, less risk, and less dependence on the conscientiousness of individuals. SIMON^® assures delivery of loans and services in a manner that provides a positive image to customers, regulators, and shareholders.

No, SIMON^® is not an LOS solution. SIMON^® extends the value of an LOS and other point solutions with overarching processes, personnel productivity, and cross function intelligence and collaboration.

As a comprehensive solution, SIMON^® helps manage the entire lifecycle of the lending process. SIMON^® is a single intelligent platform for ALL lending activities from start to finish. SIMON^® enhances your existing LOS, such as CreditQuest, DecisionPro, or other solutions and integrates with your existing LOS but does not replace it.

Many loan officers describe commercial and consumer loan processes as tedious and time consuming. The need to manage or babysit a loan through the process, search for existing misplaced customer documents, and request and submit additional documents from the customer is time consuming. This environment can tie officers to their desk and take time and focus away from what they are paid to do: bring in new business.

SIMON^® frees up loan officers to focus on the strategic work of prospecting and deepening relationships with existing customers. The SIMON^® platform takes away the officer’s need to babysit the loan through the entire process. As an intelligent platform, it coordinates all the parties involved, ensures key events are dealt with in a timely manner, proactively alerts all parties involved, and simplifies document management.

As an officer prepares to close a loan, there is no guesswork regarding what needs to be completed. The officer, assistant, administrator, credit analyst, and processor working from the single platform all know what needs to be done, by whom, and by when. The officer delivers a quality product and a great customer experience.

You’ve heard it said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” In most bank lending environments, managers and supervisors have limited access to data about the productivity, performance, and operational status of their departments or groups. The data collected often is manually tracked, self-reported, manually aggregated, and delivered weeks or a month after activity is completed. In this environment, it is difficult for managers and supervisors to respond in a timely fashion and accurately identify issues that should be addressed.

As individuals and departments use the single platform, SIMON^® simultaneously collects data regarding activities. It collects data for each process and requirement, identifying the individual, how long it was open, and when it was picked up. Performance against service level agreements is automatically determined and available real time.

With the data SIMON^® collects, managers are able to accurately measure individual and departmental productivity and performance, FTE requirements to process loans (taking into account individual loan complexity), predict resource needs, identify backlogs in real time, and monitor compliant completion of key regulatory requirements and processes that should be modified.

SIMON^® provides real time measurement as a biproduct of its use, enabling the organization to scale and continuously improve.

Depending on their role, bank employees in lending point out that they only spend 30%–60% of their time using point solutions, such as CreditQuest. The remaining 40%-70% of their time is largely manual work such as, collecting information, managing documents, updating reports, and communicating and coordinating work within and across the departmental silos.

This human-dependent work is what SIMON^® optimizes. SIMON^® wrings out costs and allows banks to add more loans to their portfolio without increasing human capital.

Collaboration and a single view of all loan activity and processes are key to increased efficiency. SIMON^® centralizes the commonly shared list of requirements that are unique to each loan. SIMON^® manages and ensures that each requirement and the related documents, due dates, and policies are met at each stage, including application, underwriting, document preparation, and funding and servicing.

Assurance that all requirements for each individual loan have been correctly identified applied and completed is also key to efficiency. SIMON^® provides that assurance, eliminating the need and costs associated with managing multiple manual checklists and “checkers checking the checker.” SIMON^® frees up loan officers, administrators, processors, and analysts from the tediousness of being perfect. SIMON^® knows all and delivers fully compliant loans that are not dependent on the conscientiousness of humans.

Many banks have resorted to the use of the “S:Drive” as a common repository for documents that are part of the underwriting process. Most banks have a document management (ECM) system, however, its role is capturing the documents after a loan has been booked. Banks also commonly use Outlook to transfer or submit documents. Significant issues develop as a result of dependency on these two tools. 

SIMON^® simplifies consumer processes, as well as the complex, exception-based process of delivering a commercial loan on time and without error. Documents are maintained in one place, are easily accessible, and are automatically uploaded and indexed, resulting in significant efficiency gains and less “lost document” frustration.

SIMON^® is a pre-configured adaptable solution. It comes out of the box with commercial and consumer pre-configured gold standard processes, regulatory rules, and standard bank policies. It does not require lengthy, expensive, and risky development and building. At the same time, it provides all the flexibility of custom-built solutions. The flexibility allows you to make changes as you scale and identify opportunities for process improvement.

Today, the lending process is a largely human workflow process filled with many manual checklists and redundant processes.

The number of variables and permutations a commercial bank must take into account is staggering. Loan products types, amounts, fees, rates, collateral, markets served, appraisals and valuation methods, title companies, insurance companies, officer lending limits, loan committee rules and processes, renewals, modifications, loan performance, call reporting, purpose codes, loan use, customer classifications, entity types, HVCRE, and Basel III are just some of the variables a bank must take into account when originating and servicing a loan in accordance with state and federal regulations and the bank’s loan policies.

Determining how each variable and combination of variables impacts how a loan is underwritten, approved, documented, serviced, and renewed remains a manual process with reliance on checklists and human diligence. In this environment, assurance that a loan is handled correctly requires multiple layers of checking by bank personnel; “checkers checking checkers.” SIMON^®, as an intelligent platform, manages this complexity and reduces the chances that loan policy or regulatory requirements are missed or reporting and loan documentation is inaccurate.

SIMON^® identifies which requirements are needed and what exceptions are allowed for each individual loan based on the loan particulars. SIMON^® ingests loan policies and regulations and intelligently applies and enforces the unique and specific requirements to each loan. At each stage of the lending process, all roles are aware of which requirements they need to apply. The status and application of these requirements is transparent to all and supports individual accountability.

It depends on your specific system and needs. SIMON® comes pre-configured with best practices, processes, requirements, documents, and standard loan policy definitions. Once installed, the pre-configured system will be conformed to your bank’s specific loan policy and procedures. SIMON® is intuitive and easy for users to learn, following today’s latest user interfaces.  To facilitate the process and make it as efficient as possible, the SIMON® team also provides a project manager to work directly with your staff.

Your project manager will help you complete all steps and collect all information needed to get up and running. The SIMON® team also provides role-specific training.