Bremer Bank: Improving customer experience and increasing project capacity
At a glance
On a mission to cultivate thriving communities, Bremer Bank, a Midwest-based commercial bank, puts their customers at the heart of everything they do. To better support their customers, the Bremer Bank team saw an opportunity to streamline their lending process.
A search for a partner who understood the importance of creating a customer-first experience led Bremer Bank to Built. “We hold our vendors to a very high standard and vet them rigorously. It’s all about how they service our customers, and Built services them at a very high level,” shares Carl Johnson, Vice President of Collateral Management.
Using Built, the lending team at Bremer Bank centralized their operations and, as a result, grew their lending capacity and improved the borrower experience.
The challenge
Like many lenders, the Bremer Bank team’s commercial loan management process consisted of paper files and Excel spreadsheets. They received large draw packets in the mail or via email and spent countless hours printing and manually parsing through the documents. The process was time-consuming and resulted in a lack of visibility for all parties involved in the loan.
To overcome the challenges of their current process, the Bremer Bank team needed a way to digitize and streamline their operations. “Our current setup wasn’t conducive to a long-term solution. We knew we needed a more robust solution,” shares Carl.
“Using Built allows us to give more clarity to our partners and keeps them in the know.”
The solution
The Bremer Bank lending team no longer relies on confusing paper trails to get answers. With Built, the team digitized and centralized the management of all loan documents and information. Built’s all-in-one platform provides complete transparency and enables Bremer Bank employees and customers to track budget, draw, and inspection updates in real-time.
The Bremer Bank team can also easily create and share reports with their customers and staff. “Built makes it very easy to create a sophisticated report and presentation for upper management,” shares Joni Zine, AVP, Construction Lending Ops Manager. And Jen Goff, Sr Commercial Construction Loan Administrator, and her team use discrepancy reports to quickly make adjustments and stay on top of project finances.
Streamlining operations has been good for business, too, with project capacity increasing by 2.5x.
The results
Before Built, loan administrators at Bremer Bank were managing 20 commercial projects. Now digital and transparent operations enable each loan admin to manage over 50 commercial projects. Increasing capacity has driven significant growth for the business. After seeing success on the commercial side, the Bremer team is excited to start using Built to manage their consumer loans.