Loan Processing at Capital One
February, 2006, Revised October , 2007
ARAVIND IMMANENI, CHRISTIAN TERWIESCH
Loan Processing at Capital One
It was in late July 2004 and Rick Weis, operations manager of the loan processing center at Capital One, was looking over the marketing forecast for the upcoming quarter. Following several months during which Capital One had funded significantly fewer loans than targeted, Capital One’s marketing team was now planning for a significant direct marketing effort. This marketing effort, which was planned to take the form of a major mail drop, was designed to increase the volume of funded loans in about six weeks when potential customers start returning these applications. It was clear to everyone at Capital One that the operations of loan processing would play a major role in determining if the upcoming mail drop would be a success. “With 14 funded loans processed per associate every month and a total of 25 associates on the team, the department does not have the capacity to handle the application volume leading to our target of 700 funded loans per month that we set following our increased marketing effort”, observed one of the managers working for Rick, “What we need is a significant increase in staff. We also need to heavily invest in information technology to further increase the productivity of the existing staff”. While it was clear that the forecasted increase in loan applications would provide a serious challenge for the underwriters, there was no consensus on what actions should be taken. As was observed by one of the executives in charge of consumer loans: “When I benchmark the productivity of our underwriting team with other companies in the industry, 14 funded loans per associate per month is not a number we can be proud of. It takes about 3 hours of actual work to fund a loan, and that includes everything from the initial interview to underwriting, quality inspection, and closing. We have 25 associates, that each works about 150 hours per month.
ARAVIND IMMANENI, CHRISTIAN TERWIESCH
Loan Processing at Capital One
It was in late July 2004 and Rick Weis, operations manager of the loan processing center at Capital One, was looking over the marketing forecast for the upcoming quarter. Following several months during which Capital One had funded significantly fewer loans than targeted, Capital One’s marketing team was now planning for a significant direct marketing effort. This marketing effort, which was planned to take the form of a major mail drop, was designed to increase the volume of funded loans in about six weeks when potential customers start returning these applications. It was clear to everyone at Capital One that the operations of loan processing would play a major role in determining if the upcoming mail drop would be a success. “With 14 funded loans processed per associate every month and a total of 25 associates on the team, the department does not have the capacity to handle the application volume leading to our target of 700 funded loans per month that we set following our increased marketing effort”, observed one of the managers working for Rick, “What we need is a significant increase in staff. We also need to heavily invest in information technology to further increase the productivity of the existing staff”. While it was clear that the forecasted increase in loan applications would provide a serious challenge for the underwriters, there was no consensus on what actions should be taken. As was observed by one of the executives in charge of consumer loans: “When I benchmark the productivity of our underwriting team with other companies in the industry, 14 funded loans per associate per month is not a number we can be proud of. It takes about 3 hours of actual work to fund a loan, and that includes everything from the initial interview to underwriting, quality inspection, and closing. We have 25 associates, that each works about 150 hours per month.