Source: USA Today - 12/11/2023

Small business lending is fraught with challenges, particularly for underserved borrowers such as women, veterans, and minorities. Amidst these challenges, iBusiness Funding’s LenderAI technology has emerged as a beacon of hope and innovation.

Obstacles in small business lending range from complex paperwork, mountains of documents to collect for underwriting and strict compliance rules. Due to this complexity, lenders tend to focus their limited resources on larger loan amounts to ensure they remain profitable.

While this is understandable, borrowers who require a lower loan amount, under $350,000, may find it challenging to get funding. This bottleneck disproportionately affects women, minority, and veteran-owned businesses, as many such businesses are the ones seeking these smaller loan amounts. These challenges, through no fault of the lender, not only hinder small businesses’ ability to secure vital funding but also contribute to cyclical financial disparities.

As digital technology infiltrated finance, artificial intelligence (AI) followed, promising to reshape the sector and pave the way for a new era of efficiency and accessibility.

Amidst this technological revolution, one company has carved out its niche with the introduction of remarkable digital technology to the SBA sector - iBusiness Funding.

Established in 2015 and acquired by Ready Capital Corporation in 2019, iBusiness Funding is a loan software and lending service provider specializing in SBA and a trailblazer in its industry. Having demonstrated uncompromising support for the backbone of our economy—small businesses—this forward-thinking company has been a powerful ally in the push for economic growth and business empowerment of smaller ventures.

Their comprehensive suite of lending solutions includes both self-service and full-service offerings for lenders looking to grow their SBA lending businesses. LenderAI, their “self-service” end-to-end SBA lending software, powers a variety of different lenders’ SBA lending businesses. LenderAI also serves as the backbone of their “full-service” Lending as a Service (LaaS) product offering lenders the ability to leverage iBusiness Funding’s technology, as well as staff, to help process, underwrite, and close loans on the lender’s behalf.

With a keen understanding of the challenges faced by small businesses in America, iBusiness Funding is uniquely positioned to solve them for the last time. Their deep industry insight and dedication to leveraging technology to enhance lending processes give them a strong competitive edge.

Leveraging state-of-the-art technology, this firm has transformed the lending process by adding its own touch to AI. Their flagship software, LenderAI, has become a true embodiment of innovation.

This mission comes through LenderAI, as well as iBusiness Funding’s Lending as a Service (LaaS) product.

On the lender side, it allows for streamlined access to information about loans, from sales to underwriting, loan closings, and servicing. This ‘self-service’ option for larger institutions that prefer to handle all processes independently allows lenders to operate however they prefer within a solid end-to-end technology platform that helps them move faster. It has helped replace outdated or disparate systems these lenders relied on in the past.

For smaller lenders that often lack the resources to run a comprehensive SBA division, iBusiness Funding offers their LaaS product. It includes a scaled-down version of their LenderAI software, which enables full transparency on what is done on the bank’s behalf. Unsurprisingly, this revolutionary Laas Product has been an indispensable ally for countless lenders.

But, with LenderAI specifically, its benefits go beyond helping lenders.

Since LenderAI helps lenders to operate more efficiently, it helps solve the financial disparity that women, veteran, and minority-owned businesses are facing. Lender AI is a crucial part of this mission, designed to level the playing field by democratizing access to funds.

“Our aim was to build AI that can anticipate and determine which specific documents will be required for a given loan application. Traditionally, the document gathering process is a huge challenge for small businesses,” Levy shares. “But my team and I believe in fair and equitable access to financing, so we were eager to translate our vision into something tangible.”

For a small business owner, the sheer number of documents necessary to get approved for a loan tended to be an overwhelming, if not exhausting, experience. From sifting through piles of papers and wrapping their heads around convoluted banking jargon to understanding which loans their venture is applicable for, budding entrepreneurs were often left ill at ease.

And as Levy points out, even once most of paperwork is completed, unexpected hiccups in the form of additional files may come up.

Fortunately, LenderAI has a solution for that, as well. “It’s designed to predict any additional documents based on the initial set provided by the applicant. It compiles all the relevant information and follows robust traditional credit underwriting methodologies.” This sort of improvement to the process can shave days or weeks off the time it takes to process a loan, which brings benefits to both the lender and the borrower.

In the complex and often opaque world of finance, iBusiness Funding has truly been a breath of fresh air. By considering both conventional and alternative data, their LenderAI platform has not just changed the way we think about lending but has also created a more inclusive, transparent, and equitable economic landscape.