5 Reasons Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is Critical to Meeting SBA PPP Demand

Overwhelmed financial institutions brace for historic loan volume and a deficit in staff. How can RPA fill the gap?

As COVID-19 ravaged the planet in recent months, few were prepared. The threat of infection continues to grow and America’s personal and economic health hangs in the balance; businesses large and small have been blindsided by an invisible, silent obstruction to previously healthy bottom lines. In circumstances like these, preparedness seems impossible.

Yet, automation is prepared.

RPA Redefines “Essential Business”

The Payroll Protection Program (PPP), a loan and grant program that originated from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, commenced last week. While the treasury of the federal government is backing the 100% guaranteed loans, financial institutions assume the burden of processing them. Currently, the program is upwards of $300 billion and growing with increasing need; while financial institutions can acquire more specialized staff, it’s not humanly possible to manage the stratospheric processing needs of the PPP. Businesses need cash injections immediately. The intelligence, speed and bandwidth of Robotic Processing Automation (RPA) is not only advantageous to banks today, it’s vital to the success of the program and the future of business in an environment that is forever changed.

5 Reasons RPA is Critical to Meeting Demand

The benefits of being a direct SBA lender are clear; PPP funds are zero-risk, government-provided, and allow banks to earn at least 0.5% through origination fees. For banks, the ability to loan more is rewarded; the higher the loan amounts that can be authorized through the SBA (ETRAN system), the more profitable banks can be.

Yet, higher loan amounts require the technology to support it. We know by now that in industries of every type, digital transformation is non-negotiable to stay competitive. In a post-Coronavirus environment, investing in automation (specifically RPA) is less about staying competitive than it is about actually staying operational. In other words, act now or risk being left behind. Here’s why:

1. RPA is vital to managing the sheer volume of PPP loan form data:

   These are unprecedented times, and it’s not humanly possible to manage the volume of processing of PPP loan form data (in the amount of time allotted) manually. With a boost from Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation eliminates the manual effort of reviewing and extracting information from SBA PPP Loan Forms and supporting documents like payroll reports and others.

2. RPA fills the gaps, so staff can focus on customers:

   Automation increases operational efficiency and reduces processing times. When RPA robots are leveraged, data can be prepared and extracted from SBA Loan Applications quickly and accurately every time. In addition, RPA can perform automated validation and underwriting tasks and secure PPP funds for banks by automatically processing requests within the SBA ETRAN system.

3. RPA has trickle-down benefits:

   For financial institutions, an investment in automation during this time allows for downstream automation of tasks involved with SBA PPP Loan adjustments, loan forgiveness processing and overall loan servicing.

4. RPA is process-agnostic:

   Automation technology is also agnostic to any process and is reusable to tackle and automate other Loan Origination and Servicing related tasks and processes performed by humans within this realm.

5. RPA can scale to changing banking operational needs:

   Beyond the demands of the PPP, financial institutions can move on to automate tasks in the front-office (e.g. contact center solutions in the cloud) and allow relationship managers to remotely serve their customers more efficiently with high-availability. This can also extend to the middle-office, which includes management, anti-money laundering AML and Auditing.

   As staffing demand within financial institutions ramps up rapidly to meet the unprecedented needs of the PPP, RPA has never been more critical to future-proof your organization.

Lateetud has created a solution that combines Artificial Intelligence with RPA to automate the end-to-end SBA PPP Loan Origination process. The solution can be deployed a functioning in its base version as soon as 24-48 Hours after infrastructure is made ready. For more information please visit the link below:

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