Fintech pacesetter TurnKey Lender out to make smaller banks more competitive

TurnKey Lender is best known for its digital lending automation platform, an offering that equips organizations around the world to expend credit in traditional and alternative lending, in retail, B2B, and — well, really any business setting imaginable.

But the financial-technology and banking-as-a-service (BaaS) pioneer also provides core banking systems to banks and credit unions, and it supplies them with fully integrative lending modules to any infrastructure. In other words, TurnKey Lender’s Enterprise platform is robust and flexible enough to support all bank operations, not just the credit piece.

 Aside from all the digital credit automation, TurnKey Lender is fully capable of:

• Handling day-to-day transactions and posting updates to accounts and other financial records
• Tracking and reporting on deposits
• Integration with general ledgers

“Of course, banks in need of software to help them track transactions are generally looking for help on the lending front as well — and the ability to handle credit through origination, underwriting, risk scoring, servicing, and collections is what makes or breaks a bank,” says TurnKey lender’s co-founder and CEO Dmitry Voronenko. “Lending, after all, is both how most banks make most of their money, and the most complicated part of banking.” And, he adds, “TurnKey Lender’s  market intelligence, scalability, and configurability make it the natural choice for banks looking to modernize their core banking capabilities.” 

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A case in point 

Iron National Bank in Salisbury, Conn., became a core banking systems client of TurnKey Lender after a years-long search for a fintech partner to help the bank go “100% paperless, and also be able to provide a user-friendly digital experience,” according to CEO Steven Cornell. “We have very high-end customers who want the option of being able to do everything remotely — and that’s what we now provide, thanks to TurnKey Lender, which was able to give us exactly what we were looking for.”

As for the TurnKey Lender credit capabilities Iron National now enjoys, Cornell applauds the fact he doesn’t have to add staff  “because the platform pulls everything together — information on the applicants’ assets, all their credit — and it puts it into a format that my underwriters can look at and process without any manual interference because it’s entirely automated.“

Adds Cornell: “In my view, TurnKey Lender has the best tools on the market to equip a bank for core operations as well as the whole complex lending piece.”

Industry recognition 

In fact, TurnKey Lender was selected by Digital.com from a field of more than 70 competitors as one of the five top most reliable providers of banking software solutions in 2021. The independent fintech review site chose TurnKey Lender for: 

• Having proved effective for private, retail, corporate, and enterprise banking with effective online banking supporting each vertical
• Top marks for credit management, payments processing, loans management and disbursal, account management, transactions, withdrawals, and interest calculation, in addition to other features.
• Reporting capabilities for measuring business performance, insights collection, and the overall efficiency of the software 

The recognition by Digital.com comes just months after consulting giant Deloitte identified TurnKey Lender as a top banking technology provider in Deloitte’s “Exploring Innovative Solutions: Digital Banking for SMEs” report, a resource aimed at helping lenders identify, test, and implement the best platforms for meeting the automation needs of consumer and business lending operations. 

The report takes a deep dive into the digital banking platform market and describes how providers are closing the gap between expectations and reality for small and medium-sized enterprises, specifically by developing solutions that are better adapted to the scale of such organizations.  

Adding capabilities in Asia 

BigPay is a digital alternative to old-school banks for customers in China, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. This year, the “digital wallet” provider capped an in-depth search for a personal-loan facility for clients in Malaysia by selecting TurnKey Lender.

“Many underserved demographics in Malaysia lack access to the credit they need because they do not have the typically ‘acceptable’ credit history which is required by traditional banks — this directly impacts the ability to build long-term financial standing,” says BigPay CEO and co-founder Salim Dhanani. With this platform in place, BigPay says it can reach millions of users in Malaysia — with a view to taking the platform to even bigger markets in South Asia and Asia-Pacific.

“The digitalization of banking services is a demographic certainty,” according to TurnKey Lender’s Voronenko. “Younger consumers like those BigPay targets are unwilling to drag themselves to branches or wait days for decisions.” 

And yet some banks, weighed down by legacy processes, continue to resist offering a completely internet-based experience and mobile deposits. Other banks have made progress on some fronts — say, online banking — but can’t handle loan origination and servicing.

A question of survival 

Of course, this makes sense: lending is more complex than transferring funds, so digitalizing the easy bits first is appealing. Once the light lifting is done, however, community banks and credit unions that delay bringing their lending up to speed soon find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. 

Global megabanks have the resources to build digital-banking platforms from scratch. Middle-market banks and credit unions don’t. For them, the capital, personnel, and time requirements for such a project are simply out of reach. Many banks in this bracket turn to TurnKey Lender to help them with their digital transformation — in lending, certainly, but also across the spectrum of retail and commercial banking services. 

“It’s really a question of survival,” says Voronenko. “Banks that need help gearing up for the twenty-first century will either get the help they need and have a fair chance to thrive as agile and innovative financial-service providers, or they will become relics on a fast track to oblivion.” 

Iron National Bank’s Cornell agrees. “Thriving for as long as we have for 170 years — through wars, depressions, and financial manias — means you have proved you can roll with the punches,” he says. “You stick to basic banking principles, sure, but you also have to make adjustments along the way.”