Joint solution supports SBA Paycheck Protection Program processing

Blue Prism, Lateetud, and ABBYY teamed up to support the U.S. government’s COVID-19 relief efforts for small businesses by helping to automate loan applications during the two rounds of funding, $349 billion and $310 billion, respectively, allocated by Congress as part of its SBA Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

The solution, used by several U.S. banks, leverages digital workers to automate processing of loan applications in a matter of seconds, for same-day approvals. 

Blue Prism is a provider of workforce automation software, Lateetud is an intelligent process automation company, and ABBYY is a digital intelligence company.

In addition, Blue Prism has extended the capability to other emerging applications including SBA PPP loan forgiveness, good standing checks, void checks for fraud, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) checks, and mortgage forbearance.

According to the companies, by effectively automating the loan approval process, this partnership has enabled rapid processing of these loans. Loan applicants have been frustrated with the amount of time it takes to process the loan applications end-to-end, including filing and receiving timely status updates.

“This is a time when organizations need AI enabling tools to quickly ramp up their automation efforts and enhance business process efficiency,” said Neil Murphy, vice president of global business development at ABBYY. The complexity of processing various forms of documents for SBA PPP loan forgiveness has been simplified with content intelligence solutions that quickly and accurately digitize, understand and process data provided by small businesses, he noted. "Our goal is to take the content-centric process burdens from financial services organizations so they can focus on serving their customers.”

To keep up with demand, First Home Bank partnered with Blue Prism, Lateetud and ABBYY to automate the entire end-to-end loan application and submission process.

“The ability to respond and automate at this hyper-level is a game changer and made a real difference in people’s lives,” said Thomas Zernick, president, SBA lending division of at First Home Bank. "With Lateetud delivering Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce, 99% of loans are processed on the day of application. We are also using the technology to automate upstream and downstream activities like application validation and loan closures, respectively. As a next step, we are working with Lateetud and Blue Prism on automating the loan forgiveness process.”

While SBA’s mandate  has prohibited the use of RPA GUI interfaces into E-Tran, Blue Prism and Lateetud have a solution available with XML file upload access into E-Tran, which adheres to the latest SBA policy.

The value proposition of accelerating the end-to-end process from application submission, to bank review and approval, underwriting, SBA upload and payment remains strong, the companies say. 

To learn more about the Blue Prism, ABBYY, and Lateetud solution, go here.

For more information about the individual companies, go to www.blueprism.com, www.lateetud.com, and www.abbyy.com.