PrecisionLender was a fintech before fintechs were cool.

Co-founder and CEO Carl Ryden told Bank Innovation his applied banking insights company is no disruptor, but, rather, an enabler of banks.

He said PrecisionLender found its opportunity in the white space between departments at banks involved in the process of pricing commercial loans and making deals, to say nothing of the antiquated systems that were used to calculate risk and maximize profitability.

A big part of a bank’s purpose on earth, Ryden explained, is to price loans. What he and other co-founders of PrecisionLender saw, however, was that banks weren’t taking full advantage of all the information they already had. Instead, the direction of the flow of billions of dollars, from banks big and small, was being determined by gigantic spreadsheets.

Founded in 2009, the Charlotte, N.C.-based company was actually able to capitalize on what was the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression. Ryden said banks, for the first time in a long time, are focusing on “rebuilding the brain.”

Ryden said jumping in at a time when banks were struggling gave PrecisionLender a strong niche in the market. And with banks’ profit margins on the upswing again, the company can now take off into that tailwind.

Business has already been quite good.

PrecisionLender has achieved an average of 100% year-over-year growth every year since securing its first client in 2010, Ryden said. He also said the company is on pace to price more than $1 trillion in commercial deals this year.

If the company was a financial institution, Ryden continued, “we would be the fourth largest bank in the United States.”

Thus, PrecisionLender is adding executives and expanding like there’s no tomorrow.

Greg Hanson, PrecisionLender’s new chief product officer, will oversee the data science team, product management and software development, the company announced this month. Hanson previously worked at LendingTree. Another new hire, Meg Sadak, formerly of AvidXchange, recently took the role of executive vice president of talent. She is tasked with growing headcount, and adding the right people. Other important hires were made earlier this year.

With 155 employees and more than 10,000 bankers at 200 commercial banks as clients, PrecisionLender is now opening offices in New York and London. Other offices are in Chicago, Dallas and Sydney.

Ryden said the company is serving banks ranging from $1 billion to $1 trillion in total assets and that banks that have implemented PrecisionLender see a mean increase of 29 basis points in portfolio income over the following two years.

He likes to ask prospective clients to consider whether they have better tools to pick their fantasy football teams or to put together a loan portfolio. Almost without exception, he said, they’re better equipped to make decisions in fantasy football.

Better Tools
The company burst onto the artificial intelligence scene in 2016, when it began developing Andi, a virtual analyst that now helps banking teams price deals and maximize their profitability in real-time. But Ryden’s approach to AI is downright practical.

“Banks don’t want AI,” he said. “They just want the I.”

He said Andi’s true value-add is that it is a “delivery mechanism” for intelligence because arming lenders with the right data in real-time means PrecisionLender can give its clients exactly what they need to deliver the experience their customers want while also helping keep their bank profitable.

Consulting firm Deloitte, in its 2018 Banking Industry Outlook, stressed the role “customer centricity” will likely play in long-term sustainable growth in the industry.

“Fortunately, most banks seem to have realized that a growing fintech ecosystem, once perceived as a threat, can actually be a boon for helping them serve their customers, both through emulation and collaboration,” the outlook said. “Fintechs, with their laser-sharp customer focus, have shown that it is possible to meet, and arguably even exceed, customer expectations.”

The outlook also found corporate customers, like their retail counterparts, are “demanding seamless, tailored product and service choices with user-friendly interfaces.” It said streamlining front-end operations could, therefore, become an “essential priority” over the next year.