Our commercial lending process: Here’s what to expect

Atom is on a journey to develop its business lending proposition into one that offers world class service to businesses applying for funding. However, as commercial lending is a complex area, it’s difficult to apply a process that will be the same every time.

While it is challenging, we aim to deliver our lending at speed and with consistency. To be able to do this, our commercial lending process has to be meticulous yet agile enough to surpass expectations. It’s also a process we’re always looking to build upon and improve.

With this in mind, I thought this post would be a good opportunity to provide insight into the key stages of our commercial lending process. Hopefully, it gives you an idea of what happens at the various stages of an application, and gives you additional knowledge with which you can set expectations with your client.

Submitting your application

So, you’ve spoken to one of our super helpful BDMs and have had a run through of the case to make sure it fits our lending criteria. You have some ballpark pricing from our quick quote tool and have keyed the application into our portal, taking time to upload all of the supporting documents. You may have even instructed your own valuation via one of our panel providers VAS or Method (but remember to let us know you’re doing this first!).

You submit the application and away it goes. But what happens next?

Our commercial lending process explained

1. Initial assessment

Once submitted, the portal will move your application across to our Intermediary Support team who will carry out an initial assessment. In most cases, this is the same working day it was received. They will consider questions like:

• Is the case RLS or not?
• If so, has an RLS Form been provided?
• Has the required documentation been submitted?
• Are all of the directors included on the application?
• Is the borrower in the UK? Is the loan above our minimum loan size of £250k?

This list is not exhaustive, but provides some idea of what they would review.

2. Issuing an Agreement in Principle (AIP)

The case is then passed to a Lending Specialist in our Originations department, prior to an Agreement in Principle (AIP) being produced. They will do a few things. Fully review the application and supporting documentation, complete all of the relevant searches and then create and issue you with an AIP. Providing you have given us everything, this should take around 2–3 working days to complete.

3. Your client accepts the terms

Over to you. You will need to discuss the AIP with your client and then confirm acceptance of the terms before we move this to underwriting — any delays here obviously slow down moving to the next stage.

4. Underwriting

Once your client has accepted the AIP and you have let us know, one of our Underwriting team will pick up your case. They will assess all the information against our lending policy and provide a formal lending decision via email — this will be an approval, a decline or a request for additional or clarifying information to support the process.

The underwriter will contact you directly if more information is needed. If the size of the loan is above £2m this will need to go to a lending committee and sometimes our board for sign off - this can take additional time.

5. Getting a loan agreement

The Underwriter will email you to let you know your loan has been approved. Your application will then go back to our Lending Specialist team, who will produce the loan documents and fee schedule. This is checked by a manager and then emailed to you via secure email. The offer will be subject to valuation unless this has already been done.

6. Offer acceptance, valuation and legals

You will now need to confirm the client has accepted the offer (this needs to be signed and returned within 14 days). Once received we will instruct the valuation and appoint the chosen solicitor. Again, if we don’t hear from you, the case will not be progressed from this point.

7. Valuation received

The valuer will return the report to our Underwriting team for assessment. If the valuation comes back below the value estimated it may result in rework of the case, a change in product or may lead to a change in the lending decision.

8. The deal is done

The loan is agreed and the last details are taken care of in the legals, COT production and, finally, completion.

How long does this process take?

We recently changed how we process loans to enable speedier processing by rejecting loans that have been submitted without full information, partially completed application forms or absent supporting documentation.

This has resulted in fully packaged applications being issued with an AIP within an average of one working day.

Getting an offer out quickly is an area we are working hard to improve and is currently around 14 working days. The main caveat to this is that this time includes any delay in the AIP being accepted, the loan agreement and fee schedule being signed and returned and time taken for any additional information being provided.

Fully packaged cases with responsive customers at the other end generally experience speedier processing times.

Ready to submit an application?

Now you’ve had a look behind the curtain at what is involved in our commercial lending process, you’re in a great position to submit an application on behalf of your customer.

To get started, just log into the portal and start an application. If you have any questions, get in touch with our TBDM team by email at businesssupport@digitalmortgages.net or by phone on 0333 399 0060 (9am–5pm, Mon–Fri). Alternatively, you can contact your RBDM.