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Commercial lending has long been one of the most complex and resource-intensive areas of banking. Unlike consumer lending, commercial loans involve larger transaction sizes, customized structures, extensive due diligence, and ongoing servicing obligations. For banks, this creates both an opportunity and a challenge: the demand for commercial credit continues to grow, but scaling operations to meet that demand often requires significant resources. This is where automation comes into play. By streamlining everything from loan origination to servicing, automation enables banks to scale their commercial lending portfolios without proportionally increasing costs or staff. In this blog, we examine how automation – particularly in AXIS by AIO Logic – can help banks scale their commercial loan portfolios.

Reducing Bottlenecks in Loan Origination

Origination is typically the most resource-heavy stage of commercial lending. Each application requires credit analysis, document collection, compliance checks, and committee reviews. Manual processes in this stage can lead to delays that frustrate clients and limit the number of deals a bank can handle. Automation solves this problem by digitizing document intake, using AI to flag missing information, and applying workflow automation to move applications seamlessly through the pipeline. Banks can process more applications in less time, giving them the capacity to serve more businesses without sacrificing thoroughness.

As a common bottleneck point in the commercial lending process, we placed a strong emphasis on streamlining loan origination. In AXIS by AIO Logic, the creation of a new deal triggers the automated creation of deal stages and the initial document request list. Deal stages and request lists are both fully customizable and can change conditionally by loan structure. The deal stage functionality enables automated tracking of the deal pipeline and related KPIs, while also identifying bottlenecks in the funnel. Additionally, AXIS can automate the initial screening and validation of loan applications, reducing the time and effort required for manual processing.

Improving Credit Analysis and Risk Assessment

Commercial loans often involve bespoke financial structures and collateral arrangements that require detailed analysis. Traditionally, credit teams spend countless hours reviewing financial statements, calculating ratios, and comparing borrower performance against benchmarks. Automation can streamline much of this work. For example, AI-powered systems can instantly extract key financial metrics, assess collateral values, and identify red flags. These efficiencies free up credit officers to focus on judgment-based decisions, enabling banks to review more deals at scale while maintaining strong risk controls.

To help lenders make informed investment decisions, we built AXIS by AIO Logic to include sophisticated out of the box financial spreading and analytics functionality for both underwriting and ongoing financial monitoring. Users have the option of spreading financial statements through AXIS’s spreading interface, through upload, or through integration with borrower accounting systems. Once financials are spread into AXIS, the platform automatically performs vertical, horizontal, and trend analysis to calculate 42 financial ratios and score borrower financial health. As a result, lenders can enjoy more accurate and dynamic underwriting.

Streamlining Compliance and Regulatory Reporting

Compliance is another area where manual processes slow growth. Commercial loans require banks to adhere to anti-money laundering (AML) checks, know-your-customer (KYC) standards, and a host of local and federal regulations. Automating compliance checks ensures that every loan meets the necessary standards without adding excessive delays. Systems can automatically cross-reference borrower information, validate required documentation, and generate regulatory reports. By embedding compliance into automated workflows, banks can reduce the risk of human error while increasing their capacity to handle more transactions.

The importance of streamlined compliance processes can sometimes be overlooked. However, this is not the case with AXIS by AIO Logic, as our platform provides comprehensive compliance capabilities. For example, AXIS can ensure that business processes comply with regulatory requirements by continuously monitoring activities and generating compliance reports. Additionally, AXIS can process and assess complex borrowing bases and borrower compliance certificates, triggering alerts on any violations. These capabilities reduce the burden on compliance teams while also increasing their effectiveness.

Enhancing Loan Structuring and Customization

One of the challenges of scaling commercial lending lies in the fact that no two loans are exactly alike. Borrowers may need different repayment schedules, collateral arrangements, or syndication structures. Automation allows banks to configure loan structures dynamically through rules-based engines. For example, automated systems can generate draft term sheets based on borrower profiles or standardize legal agreements with configurable clauses. As a result, banks can scale the number of bespoke deals they originate without overwhelming their teams.

In today’s complex economic environment, the ability to easily customize loan structures is crucial to the success of commercial lenders. To provide lenders with that flexibility, AXIS by AIO Logic supports a broad range of loan structures, loan term variance, and asset classes. In terms of loan structure, AXIS supports full or partial amortization, custom amortization, delayed draw, factoring, forward flow, and many others. Relating to loan terms, AXIS supports fixed and variable rates, PIK and warrants, tiered and conditional pricing, and automated currency conversion. AXIS also supports asset classes including direct lending, mezzanine loans, asset-based lending, structured finance, specialized asset classes, and many others.

Improving Loan Servicing and Monitoring

Once a commercial loan is booked, banks must monitor repayments, manage collateral, and track covenant compliance throughout the life of the loan. Automation transforms servicing by creating real-time monitoring systems that flag potential issues before they become problems. Automated alerts can notify bankers of late payments, covenant breaches, or declining collateral values. Additionally, digital portals can streamline communication with borrowers, making it easier to update documents or adjust terms. By automating servicing, banks can manage a larger loan book without needing to scale up back-office staff proportionally.

As commercial loan portfolios grow in size, the work of servicing a high volume of loans can become quite challenging. To help address that challenge, AXIS by AIO Logic automates a wide range of servicing tasks including loan balance management, payment schedule calculation and tracking, fee calculation and tracking, and application of capitalized payments. Additionally, AXIS monitors in real-time to identify patterns and risk factors in financial, collateral, and loan data and proactively manages risk by identifying early warning signs. These capabilities reduce the workload on staff while also reducing the likelihood of default.

Conclusion

For banks, scaling commercial lending has traditionally meant hiring more underwriters, compliance staff, and servicing teams. But this approach is costly and limits efficiency. Automation offers a smarter path forward. By streamlining origination, credit analysis, compliance, structuring, and servicing, banks can expand their commercial lending portfolios without adding proportional costs. Just as importantly, automation enhances risk management, data insights, and client experience. In a competitive lending market, banks that embrace automation will be best positioned to grow profitably and meet the evolving needs of their commercial clients. If your firm is ready to embrace automation, please feel free to contact us today to schedule an intro call and learn more about all that AXIS has to offer!