2014 Community banking best practices: Map your most common processes

Last week’s post that continued the 2014 community bank best practices series discussed the importance of defining your bank’s risk appetite to diversify risks in the upcoming year.

This post will explore the reasons why you should map out your most common processes.

In this clip from a recent Sageworks webinar, 2014 Outlook for Community Banks, Ancin Cooley, principal of Synergy Bank Consulting, explains why this is such an important issue this year.

From the video:

You should map out your most common processes; draw it out. Here’s a question to ask during your next loan committee: “How many steps does it take for us to approve a loan?” See what answers you get. From when the customer comes in the door and requests a new commercial loan, to the time you onboard it, how many steps are there? Often you get multiple responses, like six, seven or even eight steps. But if you draw and map out those processes, then you can actually try to figure out why it’s taking so long to get a loan approved. You can reduce stress between your credit department and loan officers if you’re able to quantify and measure your processes, and find out where those cogs in your machine are.

To learn more about why mapping your most common processes is so important this year, view the entire webinar on the 2014 Outlook for Community Banks.

For more information on how to better organize the loan review function, download the whitepaper on Effective Loan Review.