The business loan market has been steadily expanding in India, though the contribution of commercial banks seems to have dropped. According to RBI, the year-on-year growth of bank loans to the industry fell to 7.8% in January 2024 from 8.7% in the previous year. However, NBFC’s industrial credit outflows doubled from 6.1% to 12.8% during 2022-23, with industry analysts predicting the robust growth to continue. To make the most of upcoming opportunities, business leaders must reinvent their lending automation processing systems. They must devise fresh strategies that are equipped to handle emerging needs.
Credit companies find themselves in a challenging labyrith of the market, regardless whether they are a start up trying to gain a foothold in the market or existing player keen to retain their share. Identifying profitable opportunities, which is the first step in the selling process, is a critical need. The quality of prospects determines the chances of them turning into rewarding relationships. The higher the quality of prospects, the better opportunity they present.
Organizations struggling to cope with constantly evolving business needs are likely following traditional lead acquisition methods. There are two key reasons why these approaches fall short.
1. Borrowers have become more informed and are meticulous with the choices they make. They want their unique needs to be met with services personalised for them. Customer expectations are increasingly complex, filled with nuance and hard to fathom. Often, they expect the companies to anticipate and fulfil their wishes, without having to divulge in the specific details of their needs. Borrowers look for transparency of processes and shorter turnaround times.
2. The competition in this crowded market has only become fiercer with time. The run-of-the-mill system of products have declining relevance in this evolving list of unique customer needs. Innovation is required for surviving in this battle for customers’ mindshare. The offerings now have to be unique, and delivered in a novel way to meet customers’ expectations. The ability to stay ahead of other players now depends on the product and user experience.
Disruptive lead generation and customer engagement strategies have become more relevant than ever. Lending businesses have been focussing on simplifying everyday tasks with IT and software applications. Although there have been instances of automating repetitive processes, their scope is limited to improving efficiency in a specific area. Human perception and decisions still operate lead generation and acquisition workflows. There is a need for significant steps from business leaders in the direction of transforming sales operations and technology.
Revolutionising applications that leverage Al for loan companies can be the answer to the anticipating customer expectations. AI tools are robust and equipped with the adaptability to meet new-age demands. AI-powered applications can help loan companies unearth vital insights from a plethora of available data. They can help speed up workflows while facilitating data intelligent, informed, error-free decisions. NBFCs and banks can enhance their efficiency, reduce credit risks and acquire a competitive edge by powering their systems with AI solutions.
How Al benefits organizations
AI is versatile. When complemented with affordable cloud computing infrastructure, it offers a world of exciting possibilities to organizations of all sizes. AI allows for a wide range of applications, solving formidable problems and rendering unique benefits.
AI solutions for NBFCs and financial institutions produce substantive advantages that cannot go unnoticed by industry leaders. Let us consider how AI can revolutionize lending automation processing systems, especially with sales workflows.
Pre-sales and marketing
1. Market intelligence:
Today, the market is flooded with data, available within the reach of anyone looking for it. Organizations have access to information in the public domain and extensive reports published by reputed research companies. However, the real challenge presents itself in deriving meaning from the data. AI- powered analytical tools extract insights that are indicative of critical industry trends, demographic and geographic characteristics of customer preferences. Companies can harness such insights to align their sales strategies with market needs.
2. Product mix and positioning:
Lending businesses must deliberate upon their product mix, and few variants for their product. It is key in identifying the variety of customer expectations and their gaping differences. Borrowers must be presented with compelling product on specific terms appealing to their sensitivities for the engagement to be productive. AI tools provide insight on how customers would perceive options presented to them, enabling best fit products to be created. AI can also help predict how market would react to such offerings, facilitating a higher conversion rate.
Selling and onboarding
1. Personalized offers:
Personalised experiences are cherished by customers. Purposeful customer engagements are built when companies acknowledge customer’s unique needs and present effective offerings that fulfil those needs. They lead to strong customer loyalty and help build a referral network that brings more prospects. There are several financial indicators that reflect borrower’s aspirations and credit appetite. AI can systematically analyse financial indicators that can support creation of need-specific products that cater to individual requirements.
2. Efficiency enhancements:
AI-powered loan processing automation can turn routine sales processes into effective, result-oriented tasks. AI solutions streamline and accelerate the work with high levels of accuracy and reduced credit risks. They can analyse a variety of documents required for credit underwriting and loan approval. They analyze bank statements, financial statements, and other documents, verify and cross-check data, to compute creditworthiness scores within minutes. This eliminates error-prone, labour-intensive work that otherwise takes a couple of days. Loan processing automation meets the operational needs of lending businesses, by empowering business leaders to optimize resources towards increasing profitability while minimising costs.
Customer engagement
1. Improved customer satisfaction:
Personalised communication can improve customer interactions. AI makes it possible to create messages for target segments or individual customers that each can relate to. Loan processing automation facilitates quicker approvals and shorter waiting periods for smooth customer experience. Chatbots are fascinating and effective to handle sales and support queries with automated, intelligent answers. Customer satisfaction can be a passive factor, yet influential in nurturing business prospects such that its value cannot be ignored.
2. Cross-selling and upselling:
Customers’ experiences, feedback and interactions offer exhaustive data to discover untapped opportunities. AI systematically sifts through the data to identify aspects that indicate towards a potential need. They use cutting edge algorithms with predictive technology that suggest when pitching the right product to a customer can have high chances of sale. These AI tools can be customized to meet evolving needs and generate valuable knowledge base for identifying upselling and cross-selling possibilities. Revenue streams can thus get a boost with AI, without additional resources or efforts.
