Seattle Bank has teamed up with two fintechs to beef up its digital loan offerings within point-of-sale consumer loans and small- to medium-size business loans.

The $781 million, Seattle-based bank partnered with software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider Judi.ai to break into SMB lending and address challenges in the space, Josh Williams,  executive vice president, chief banking officer and head of partnerships at Seattle Bank, told Bank Automation News.

“One of the inherent challenges for small businesses is … oftentimes making a $300,000 loan is even harder than making a $3 million loan,” Williams said, noting that smaller businesses are susceptible to unexpected events, and don’t have as many financial resources, including chief financial officers, on their teams.

The bank “saw an opportunity in small business lending, but also knew that to really go after that market, you do need a different approach and to be efficient,” Judi.ai Chief Executive Gord Baizley told BAN.

With Judi.ai, Seattle Bank “can get through workflow and decisioning in minutes, as opposed to collecting financial statements, analyzing them, asking for a tax return, taking a couple of weeks back and forth. … We can connect the data sources automatically,” Baizley said.

“Small businesses expect good, streamlined experiences,” he added.

Embedded banking, POS capabilities

Last week, the bank also partnered with fintech LoanStar Technologies to provide embedded banking and point-of-sale capabilities, Seattle Bank’s Williams told BAN, noting the connection was made through the bank’s core provider, Finastra.

Finastra is committed to open and embedded banking, so the core provider “identified LoanStar as a technology provider that wanted to access more banks,” Williams said.

LoanStar connects the bank with its merchant network to facilitate real-time underwriting, Williams said, noting that the fintech already has a client-facing side, but needed capital to be allocated in real time through its APIs to eliminate manual intervention and streamline access to funding.

Seattle Bank continues on its digital journey. In December, the bank launched a new website and mobile app CD Valet, to help customers find competitive certificate-of-deposit rates, Seattle Bank Chief Executive John Blizzard previously told BAN.

As the bank moves forward and vets potential fintech partners, the question is, “What are the different ways to leverage technology directly through the customer and or indirectly through other partners that are already close to the customer.”