Lending has always been a data-driven enterprise. It requires lenders to gather a great deal of information about borrowers. LendInvest, which works with a network of 6,500 mortgage brokers, has relied on Salesforce since day one.
“Around 30% of our borrowers are repeat customers. We have thousands of data points on each, and we don’t want to treat them as strangers,” said Arman Tahmassebi, Chief Operating Officer, LendInvest. “Salesforce is our CRM. I’ve worked with Salesforce in every company I’ve worked since 2004. It is central to our customer relationships.”
Tahmassebi said the platform qualities of Salesforce, the ease of integration, flexibility, and scale, mean the engagement has grown in recent years.
“Salesforce gives us a framework on which to better understand our customers, to communicate with them, and enrich by adding our own or third party integrations. It enables our sales teams, our underwriters, our brokers, to understand what each customer wants to make effective and efficient decisions.”
LendInvest uses Salesforce Sales and Service Cloud to manage the end-to-end short-term loan applications incoming via brokers. This kickstarts an application for the customer, triggering an opportunity in Sales Cloud. Service Cloud in tandem with Sales Cloud is used to manage credit checks via a seamless case management process, and to track and stay on top of missing assets. By having all their data in a single tool, LendInvest can manage the entire workflow, from application to compliance checks to approval. There is a full, digital audit trail. The app integrates with the Land Registry, credit bureaus, and valuation data.
“Because we are a specialist lender there remains the need for human expertise. The advantage of Salesforce is that we are quicker to process the administration, and the human expert steps in with the correct information to hand,” Tahmassebi explained. “It is not a ‘computer says no’ process.”
LendInvest then uses Pardot ’s marketing automation to manage newsletters and communications with brokers. This delivers daily updates on new products, events and opportunities to new and existing partners within the LendInvest ecosystem.
“This type of automation means we can optimise how we nurture customers through our sales funnels,” explains Precious Ene, Operational Systems and Change Manager, LendInvest.
Tableau is used for financial analysis and to help create a 360° view of customers. “Data is at the heart of our business. Tableau enables us to gather up millions of bits of data and make better decisions” Tahmassebi adds.