Validis announces it has made significant technological enhancements to its award-winning platform in order to help lenders meet obligations of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS).
Under the new guidance SMEs must prepare detailed financial reports and complete a CBILS applications form in order to apply for a loan worth up to £5m that is 80% underwritten by the UK government.
The enhanced platform, which is deployable within 24 hours, drastically reduces the amount of preparation work required by both the SME and the lender in order to submit and review an application. A huge time saving as business owners are fighting to save their businesses and lenders are seeing an unprecedented volume of SME loan applications.
Under the CBILS framework lenders have an obligation to ensure the applicant is solvent and eligible. Validis now allows any lender to leverage a simple, configurable CBILS webform that establishes eligibility in a few simple clicks. Used in conjunction with our existing accounting data extraction technology, this gives the lender rapid access to the most up-to-date standardised financials and an accurate, real-time picture of the financial health of the SME.
Crucially it allows the lender to evaluate the financial position of the SME immediately before COVID19 started. The Validis team has also developed an Insolvency Calculator built on the Altman Z-Score and an affordability calculator based on Cashflow available for Debt Service calculations (CFADS). Both of these are easily derived from the SMEs management accounts and enable overstretched Relationship managers and credit teams to evaluate the position of the applicant in minutes.
A UK Tier 1 client has recently seen a 69% reduction in their lending cycle using our technology to source, extract and interpret their SMEs management accounts. A time saving that has never been more critical.
Nik Haidar, UK General Manager at Validis, said “Everything possible must be done to support the UK economy and the millions of small and medium sized businesses that are struggling right now. For our part that means giving UK banks and digital lenders the right tools to help accelerate the distribution of the Chancellor’s £330bn loan scheme. We recognise that speed is critical for SMEs. That’s why we now ensure lenders are set up within 24 hours to digitally extract and process loan application data. – bringing relief to both the SMEs who need the funds and to the over-stretched front office staff working to service them. The data that we enable them to access means they can accept more CBILS loans, compliantly, securely and with an audit trail to ensure compliance and onward servicing and monitoring.”
