Birmingham, Ala.-based, Regions Bank ($49 billion asset) operates 680 branch locations located in nine Southern states. In 1995, the bank had no underwriting system in place to facilitate its indirect and direct lending operations. As a result, loan underwriting was a time and resource-consuming process for the bank and its staff.
The bank began its search for a technology provider to automate its underwriting and selected Baton Rouge, La.-based APPRO Systems, Inc. and its consumer loan automation system, LoanCenter Consumer™ (then named MP-100) to fulfill its requirements. Regions Bank implemented APPRO’s system in 1995 and realized an almost immediate impact on its lending processes as a result. “We have realized a consistent return on investment from working with APPRO since we first implemented its MP-100 loan automation system back in 1995,” said Ron Luth, president and CEO of Regions Bank. “By automating our underwriting, it provided us with the necessary framework to automatically underwrite our loans and standardize our processes, which resulted in increased loan volume.”
Since its initial implementation of APPRO’s technology, Regions Bank has upgraded the system four times and, according to bank officials, continues to receive a healthy return on investment of utilizing the system. In fact, the bank has achieved a 40 percent productivity increase in loan processing since upgrading from MP-100 to LoanCenter Consumer in 2002.
“As APPRO’s technology continued to evolve, so did the efficiency and effectiveness with which we were able to underwrite loans,” said Luth. “In 2002, APPRO introduced LoanCenter Consumer as an upgraded replacement system to MP-100, and its implementation into our institution quickly resulted in a 40 percent lift in productivity. Eight years into our relationship with APPRO, we are now on our fourth systems upgrade with the company and the relationship is continuing to pay off as Benchmark Consulting has cited us as one of the leading institutions in the country in terms of ability to successfully auto-decision loan applications.”
Much of Regions Bank’s lending business is made up of indirect automobile financing and the bank cites LoanCenter Consumer’s flexibility and interface capabilities with peripheral systems like DealerTrack, RouteOne and Global Fax as key components of the success that the bank continues to receive in working with the system. Bank officials cite the ability to quickly pull and integrate new technology as it becomes available, without having to modify a legacy system, as an important advantage of LoanCenter Consumer.
“One of the most important capabilities of LoanCenter to our operations is its flexibility and the ease with which APPRO is able to interface it with peripheral systems like DealerTrack and Global Fax,” said Luth. “It is vital to the success of our lending operations to be able to pull new technology as it becomes available without having to modify a legacy system ourselves.”
LoanCenter Consumer continues to impact how Regions Bank processes its indirect lending and the bank has plans for how it will impact its direct lending in the future. The bank plans to send all of its direct lending applications from all of its branches to LoanCenter Consumer through APPRO Loan Exchange (ALEX), APPRO's robust middleware tool that connects APPRO databases to third party systems.
“Our relationship with Regions Bank has been a rewarding one for both parties involved,” said Steve Uffman, CEO of APPRO Systems, Inc. “Because we have such an established track record and long history with Regions Bank, it has really provided us an opportunity to see the evolution of our system at work over the years and the resulting benefits that working with the bank as a true business partner have, and continue to, generate for them.”
Regions, headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., is a full-service provider of banking, securities brokerage, mortgage and insurance products and services. As of Dec. 31, 2003, Regions had $48.6 billion in assets and shareholders' equity of $4.5 billion. Its banking subsidiary, Regions Bank, operates more than 680 offices across a nine-state geographic footprint in the South and Texas. Its securities brokerage subsidiary, Morgan Keegan, provides investment and brokerage services from more than 140 offices. Additional information about Regions, which is a member of both the Forbes and Fortune 500, can be found at www.Regions.com.