Australia's banks and financial institutions provide in excess of $650 billion in commercial credit to the market. The majority of commercial loan decisions rely on company and securities checks which provide insights into a business's ability to manage debt.

Says SAI Global General Manager, Product and Marketing, Benjamin Balk: “In financial institutions these processes typically involve credit teams painstakingly trawling through hundreds of pages of government extracts, performing separate ASIC, PPSR, Bankruptcy and other searches and once done, interpreting the data and developing a summary of the results.

Decisions about whether or not to approve credit applications are often based on these findings which despite best efforts can be highly subjective, prone to error and overlook vital information tucked away in difficult to read reports; particularly in relation to commercial lending. The fallout from this is that loans can be granted without the lender seeing the full picture. For financial institutions, this can mean accruing unnecessary bad debt and lost opportunities, as a result of time wasted on prolonged data reviews. In a highly competitive market and with increasing compliance obligations, making the right decision fast has never been more important,

Benjamin Balk

SAI Global General Manager, Product and Marketing

The launch of SAI Global's new Dynamic Company and Securities Report is set to radically reduce the risk of human error by doing the 'heavy-lifting' for back office staff involved in assessing and processing commercial loan applications.

The Report latest addition to SAI Global's rapidly expanding stable of 'commercial insights' solutions and has been integrated into SAI Global's Commercial Insights platforms, Search Manager* and Encompass*.

The new report does the hard work by analysing the key data from ASIC, ABN and PPSR searches and presenting the results in a concise summary report. This allows lending teams across the financial institution to quickly confirm details about companies and their directors, their assets and other individuals or entities involved in a deal. It also highlights areas of potential credit risk when used at the point of credit application. This greatly reduces the errors that come with manually sourcing and interpreting data because information is provided as a ‘statement of fact’ and there is no need for subjective interpretation.

Benjamin Balk

Mr Balk says this not only allows for better decision-making but has the potential to cut down the decision making process significantly and provide a more consistent basis for decisions across the large number of people typically involved in assessing applications.

Initial results from a trial underway in a major Australian bank that is adopting the report, reveals there are now fewer errors in data interpretation by staff and loan decisions are being made in much shorter timeframe.

The Report has also provided banks with the perfect solution to a long-standing problem: how to store historical search material which is typically discarded after initial use, such as during a credit application.

Now Search Manager users can access automatically created 'workspace' on the Encompass* platform via a link in the Dynamic Report. Here they can access all the original search documents, even a spreadsheet of PPSR results. The Encompass platform enables the customer to retain all previous data so that this can be reused and continue to give value to the financial institution throughout the customer lifecycle.
 
Says Mr. Balk: “This is a significant breakthrough and is set to have a major impact for our banking clients because they now have available an archive which will demonstrate the due diligence that has been carried out in each and every commercial lending decision, greatly aiding the audit process and displaying the bank's adherence to compliance obligations. This information can also be used for future dealings.
 
“Now users can be confident their search history will be preserved and will stand up to future audit.”
 
Mr Balk says the new report has strengthened SAI Global's trusted position as a supplier of services to major banks and other lenders and has demonstrated its willingness to invest in innovative commercial insights solutions.

Instead of simply being a data provider, we are now capable of providing extremely valuable ‘insights’ into business’s critical information and presenting this information in a way that cuts through the complexity of traditional search and interpretation and makes itquick and easy to understand. We have brought search and analysis into the 21st century and are presenting it to our customers in a way that best suits their requirements.

Benjamin Balk

https://saiglobal.wistia.com/projects/64nlyiajvx

• The new report is a SaaS solution which can be delivered via multiple devices.

For more media information contact:
Benjamin Balk on 0401 672 313
Wendy Parker on 0422 694 503

*More about Search Manager.....As an approved ASIC, PPSR, AFSA and Land Registry information broking platform, it provides users with access to bankruptcy checks, company and business intelligence, information on key individuals and titles as well as PPSR searches and registration capabilities.

*More about Encompass …….. It stores searches and reports as interactive and shareable corporate trees showing relationships across data supplied by ASIC, Land Registries and the PPS Register. This enables users to rapidly understand how people, companies and property are connected...