FIS Unveils SMB Digital Lending to Enhance Small Business Loan Operations
FIS® (NYSE: FIS), a global leader in financial technology, today announced the launch of its new SMB Digital Lending solution. Created in partnership with Lendio, the nation’s leading small business financial solutions technology platform, the solution aims to reduce the barriers to funding for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by streamlining and automating lending processes for financial institutions. The solution is FIS’ first in a portfolio of digital banking solutions to focus specifically on loans for SMBs and complements FIS’ existing services that cater to consumer lending and large corporate loans.
“FIS’ SMB Digital Lending solution is a game-changer for financial institutions and small businesses alike,” said Steve Sabin, SVP, Division Executive, FIS Lending. “By partnering with Lendio, we are leveraging our unmatched scale and reach in the banking industry plus Lendio’s advanced small business underwriting technology and empowering financial institutions to profitably serve their small business customers. The expansion of our digital banking capabilities illustrates FIS’ commitment to serving the entire money lifecycle—whether at rest, in motion, or at work—and I look forward to seeing the positive impact the solution brings.”
Why SMB Digital Lending Matters
According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 99.9% of American businesses are small businesses, representing 43.5% of U.S. GDP and employing nearly half of America’s employed workforce. However, SMB loan underwriting historically requires extensive documentation and manual reviews, resulting in a costly and time-consuming origination process. When combined with high interest rates, the expense of SMB loans can be prohibitive for some borrowers, which negatively impacts both SMBs and banks as banks continue to lose revenue and market share and borrowers increasingly turn to alternative lenders.
How SMB Digital Lending Works
As a cloud-native and API-driven SaaS solution, SMB Digital Lending provides fully automated decisioning and loan boarding by focusing on smaller borrowers. By combining large-scale data science and machine learning with market-leading loan underwriting expertise, it helps banks profitably source, underwrite, and fund SMB loans of any size—ultimately seeking to make them more affordable for the borrower.
The solution’s embedded transaction analytics will also generate a holistic view of borrower health, pre-qualify SMB depositors, and target them with marketing and sales outreach to simultaneously help lenders generate additional revenue growth. Lenders looking to acquire new customers also may benefit by being connected to FIS’ direct marketplace and embedded lending relationships.
SMB Digital Lending is also built to complement any financial institutions’ current technology stack, including loan servicing solutions from FIS and other providers, seeking to make it easy to adopt and provide an industry-leading digital customer experience for small businesses.
“We are thrilled to partner with FIS, a global leader in financial technology, to help bring this SMB lending platform to banks across the country,” said Brock Blake, CEO and co-founder of Lendio. “Our mission at Lendio is to fuel the dreams of small business owners by simplifying small business lending. FIS’ SMB Digital Lending solution is a perfect fit for that mission, as it enables banks to offer a fast, easy, and transparent loan process to their small business clients. Together with FIS, we are creating a win-win situation for banks and small businesses, and we look forward to expanding our reach and impact through this partnership.”
