Describe about the Business Process Analysis and Improvement.
The report talks about the commercial lending process of the financial institution named Bank of Golden Merchants (BGM). It is a local Australian financial institution that offers loans to its customers following a stipulated process. The report discusses briefly about the functioning of the company BGM. The report also throws light on the commercial process of giving loans by the company.
The Bank of Golden Merchants is a famous provider of both business and personal banking services.BGM has more than 200 branches across the country. Most of it’s customers all across the country are highly satisfied with their services. Inspite of their successful provision of services, the company BGM faces challenges from its rival banking and public loan service provider (Cetorelli, et al., 2012). Hence the Commercial Lending Process (CLP) of providing loans to its customers needs to be carefully analysed to maintain the leading position of the company in the industry.
BGM’s commercial lending process of providing loans is of primary concern to the Business Banking Solutions team of the company regarding the effectiveness, timeliness and efficiency of the process. The iterative, manual paper based nature of the commercial lending process has also been an area of concern as it affects the time taken to complete the process. To do the needful the company has hired a process improvement manager of the Business Banking division, Kevin Johnson to investigate, review and analyse the present condition of the process. He would also summarize his findings and give a detailed report. The main phases involved in the process of lending loans includes application for loans by the customer, pre approval assessment of the approval, documentation of the application post approval, settlement of loans. The above phases of the process take variable amount of time to get completed (Ault & Spicer,2014).
The bank takes funds from people in low cost deposit form and makes money. Bank then gives out these funds in the form of loans to its customers at a higher interest rate. The profit of the bank is calculated as the difference between the price the bank pays for the deposits and the return amount which the bank gets in the form of loans. All loans in the bank go through a credit approval process to protect the deposits of people kept with the bank. During the process of credit approval the bank analyses and determines whether it’s customer can repay back the loan well on or before the scheduled time. If the bank finds that there is a chance of the customer not being able to repay back the loan well within time then the bank either restructures the loan or it denies the loan to its customer (Chen & Deng, 2013).
After the customer places their request for the commercial loan, there are many steps which the bank follows to finally approve the loan. A number of persons are involved in all these stages. First among these people is the sales manager who leads the team of commercial relationship managers. The team gives the decision whether the bank should continue with the loan proposal or not. The other members involved in the whole process of giving loans are the credit officer and credit analyst. The loan giving process begins with the relationship officer identifying the prospect of the loan. Then he makes further discussion with the customer and interviews him to extract more information that would be required in the loan making process. Then the relationship manager discusses the loan request with the sales manager. At this point the bank decides whether to move forward with the loan giving process. After this point comes the phase of documentation. In this phase the bank asks for the relevant documents from the customer that would be used for evaluation during the process. The task of the credit analyst is to do the documentation and he holds discussion with the relationship manger regarding the timing of request and the structure of the loan. Then the credit analyst starts their analysis of the loan and the loan lending process moves forward (Dorado, 2013).
The credit lending process involves a lot of waste that is generated during the loan lending process. Waste in a process of lending commercial loans can be defined as all those intermediate products or services provided by the bank which has no value to the customer. Waste consists of all those steps in the process of loan production for which the customer does not pay even if he is aware of that step to be present in the process (Blackwell, et al., 2015). The wastes involved in the commercial lending process of BGM can be described as follows:
Over processing: even after taking interviews of the customer and talking to them regarding the loan they want the bank may not get the idea of what the customer wants. Then the bank may include return envelops for the payment of loans. The customers who pay by cheque may consider this to be a value added process whereas customers who pay by online or any other mode would consider to be a waste.
Unnecessary movement of people: the movement of workers in the bank is a waste of the CLM process. The movement of workers involves people constantly moving between various computer drives and domain. The workers are often required to do a lot of keystrokes to complete a computerised task.
Waiting: one of the main wastes of the loan lending process of is the delay that occurs between the different phases of the process. BGM often keeps its customers waiting for a long time before the loan gets sanctioned (Cowling & Siepel, 2013).
These are some of the issues which the current process of providing loans of BGM faces. These issues, along with a few others, affect the efficiency of the CLM and hamper the smooth functioning of the process. If the bank cannot do away with these wastes from the process of providing loans to it’s customers then it may lose some of it’s customers for making them wait for a long time to get their desired loans.
BGM has a commitment mentioned in its vision statement that it would provide the best possible commercial loan lending services to its customers. But often it is seen that the bank fails to keep its promise. To provide best services to its customers, every individual member of the bank involved in the commercial lending process should be consistent and dedicated towards their service. The bank’s commercial lending group comprising of the loan administrators, relationships manager, credit analysts among a few others should be dedicated to provide world class service to their customers (Coulson, & Sullivan, 2014). BGM can adopt certain short term as well as long term improvement plan to improve and to speed up their process of commercial loan lending.
The BGM needs to set their game plan milestone in a very efficient manner so that their goals can be achieved and they can provide best services to their customers. A short term improvement plan to improve the CLP that BGM can undertake includes the development of a team for process improvement that includes members from all the groups that function in the commercial lending process. The team should set its goal in such a way so that it can deliver commercial loans in a hassle free and consistent manner well within the time frame. After forming such groups BGM has to identify any obstacles faced during this process and should talk about the service levels which the employees have to provide throughout the process to achieve the goal of the company (Calderon & Chong, 2014).
A long term improvement strategy which BGM can adopt to improve the CLP services is to choosing and installing a commercial loan origination solution that can provide and support strong flow of work in the banking environment. The proper loan origination solution can efficiently manage the SLA’s and integrated data sharing and status of the loan lending process. The BGM should aim at providing world class service to its customers, no matter how unachievable the target may seem to be. BGM should encourage every member in the teams working in the commercial loan lending process to dedicatedly provide their service in order to hold their commitments (Davenport, 2013).
Before implementing the above mentioned long term and short term improvement plans, BGM must conduct a feasibility study to ensure whether its services would benefit its customers or not. Firstly BGM should conduct a survey to get an idea of the demand for commercial loans among its customers. Secondly BGM should also gather information about the interest rates offered by it’s rivals. BGM should provide the highest interest rates to draw most of the customers to itself. Finally BGM should predict the profit that it can achieve implementing its revised plans (Kuratko, 2016).
Conclusion
The “to be” business model for the BGM should contain every elements present in the existing business model process. The to be process model should have an elaborate and detailed description of the objectives of the business, list of steps to complete the CLP, list of roles of the people involved in different phases of the CLP, etc. The to be business plans can be made quite easily and quickly and it can foster the improvement in the commercial lending process of BGM (Patel, 2015).
References:
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Ault, J. K., & Spicer, A. (2014). The institutional context of poverty: State fragility as a predictor of crossâ€Ânational variation in commercial microfinance lending. Strategic Management Journal, 35(12), 1818-1838.
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Cetorelli, N., Mandel, B. H., & Mollineaux, L. (2012). The evolution of banks and financial intermediation: framing the analysis. Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, 18(2), 1-12.
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Patel, S. (2015). Commercial bank lending and inventory levels in industries.
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