First Internet Bank Integrates Parlay Finance’s AI-Native Loan Intelligence System

First Internet Bank has integrated Parlay Finance’s artificial intelligence-native Loan Intelligence System to enhance its Small Business Administration lending.

The bank expects to see as much as a 50% increase in efficiencies throughout the lending process as the LIS enables its SBA lending operations team to eliminate manual tasks and gain deeper insights for loan decisioning, the companies said in a Thursday (Oct. 16) press release.

“Partnering with Parlay has allowed us to reclaim hours once spent on manual data entry and repetitive tasks,” First Internet Bank President and Chief Operating Officer Nicole Lorch said in the release.

Craig Fortner, senior vice president and chief information officer at First Internet Bank, said in the release that LIS “integrated seamlessly into our tech stack, instantly boosting data quality and workflow efficiency.”

The LIS features real-time customer onboarding and guidance that improves the speed and accuracy of submissions; intelligent information validation that taps data sources like credit bureaus, financial statements, tax records and incorporation documents; AI-powered analysis that accelerates pre-vetting and deal structuring; and institutional lending intelligence that scales the bank’s own unique expertise, according to the release.

For borrowers, the LIS delivers a customer experience in which they can submit an inquiry and receive real-time information about their business health, application status and next steps in the process, per the release.

“First Internet Bank pioneered branchless banking in 1999,” Parlay Finance Founder and CEO Alex McLeod said in the release. “Now they’re showing the industry how AI strengthens relationship banking and enables lenders to serve far more small businesses.”

PYMNTS reported in May that loan underwriting via automation has expanded credit access and sharpened the identification of credit-worthy customers.

For small and medium-sized businesses, digital lending and financing products represent a bright spot in a challenging landscape, PYMNTS reported in January 2024.

AI-driven decision frameworks are propelling a profound and fundamental shift in the approaches to SMB lending and democratizing access to working capital.

The PYMNTS Intelligence and Markaaz collaboration “Keeping Score: Why Data Quality Determines Lending Decisions for the Smallest Firms” found that 84% of lenders that have robust underwriting standards report that their small business loans are “highly profitable.”

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.