To lend or not to lend, that is the question

Polonius gave some advice to Laertes in Hamlet – Neither a borrower or a lender be! But hold on a moment – you are in the business of lending and thousands of people and companies depend on you to see them through a time of shortage – a time of planning – a time when you are the only organisation they feel able to turn to in time of need.

Shakespeare, William to his friends, was examining a relationship between friends. “I’m broke, lend me some ducats and I promise to pay you back on the morrow.” Or words to that effect! But as Polonius was warning Laertes, a promise of this nature, if broken, also breaks the friendship. In other words, if you wish to stay friends with those around you, do not lend in case the debtor cannot repay.

That was then – but this is now. Corniche provides the engine and the memory and the management for hundreds of thousands of loans – Megasol is a leading provider of lending software in Scandinavia. Our clients serve many different markets including but not limited to payday loans, retail purchase loans, personal loans, start-up loans, small business loans and so on. It follows that Corniche is not just another banking system!

Every Megasol client has its own recipe for a success story in the loans industry. They serve specific markets with products tailored to the needs of those markets, and with the fail-safes in place in any case of default.

One key factor is that the banking system supporting the Loans portfolio must be flexible to cater for all of these market needs – for on-boarding, for compliance, for loan management, for default management and for call-in.

But hold on – a banking system which does all of that would be monolithic and expensive, you say! Quite correct. But a misinterpretation. Let me explain further.

Corniche is, if you like, the “core niche”… It sits in the centre of a range of services, either self-developed or bought-in because they match your needs in the marketplace. What is important is that the Corniche API allows you to seamlessly merge a range of services into Corniche to provide your client and yourself with a cohesive whole carefully designed by you.

On-boarding is the first step in the customer experience. If your potential customers cannot find you, then you will have no-one to bring on board. Your marketing team will have their ideas on how to attract customers. We at Megasol can help – by providing a test bank with every live Corniche installation so that your potential customers can take a look at the environment and decide whether to go with you. An application for a loan will typically follow, and the details of the potential new customer, collected by your on-boarding app, are written into Corniche. Depending on your business model, you may carry out credit checking and only write the prospective client into Corniche if a positive credit decision can be made. You have control – over the KYC and credit check aspects through organisations like UC or CreditSafe or Grada or WorldCheck – because your client-facing App simply integrates with the required services through interfacing API’s like the powerful Corniche API suite.

Corniche handles the day-to-day accrual of interest, notices of repayment or overdue payments, and potentially call-ins, in which case the loans can be routed to debt collection. Where you have loan collateral – current or savings account or term deposits held as guarantee against loan default, Corniche can automatically debit the guarantor account and credit the loan on the repayment due date.

Even though we have the ability in Corniche to send secure messages to the client, perhaps reminding them of or confirming receipt of a payment, there are loans providers who prefer to mail out a reminder notice a couple of weeks before payment due date – also updating the client with loan balance and other information in the letter. To achieve this, we have integrations with printers who can print the letters and envelopes and even stuff, stamp and mail the reminders. We have integrated with companies which provide debt collection services and can automatically route the details of called-in loans for debt collection.

I used the term “core niche” above. I hope that you now understand the role that Corniche plays – a central accounting and management system for deposits and loans – surrounded by a universe of the services that you integrate through Corniche BOapi – the back-office interface – and Corniche CUapi – the client user interface.

With Corniche on your side, we think that Polonius might observe “Never a borrower, but always a lender be…”

Until next time.