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Special Reports
Commercial Lending
Engine Eases Brokers Entry into Commercial
By Brad Finkelstein
COSTA MESA, CA -- Mortgage brokers will, for a fee, be able to private label themselves
on the new commercial lending search engine being offered through www.ibank.com.
The engine is being targeted to small businesses that are looking for commercial
mortgage loans as well as business loans and equipment loans. Home-equity loans are also available through the
engine.
"Unlike other major search engines, our commercial lending search engine
is about connecting the small business person with real lenders, with real money, in real time," said Thomas
O. Markel, chairman and chief executive of Credentrust Software Inc. here, the company that powers www.ibank.com.
"In an efficient market, banks, credit unions, brokers and private investors
can get hundreds of leads daily of small businesses that match their lending criteria. The more targeted their
search campaign, the more loans they close, the higher they rank - everybody wins. It's that simple."
A site can be customized for the mortgage broker and the broker can be in the
commercial business in 24 hours, Mr. Markel noted.
The engine searches for up to 85 different types of loans. The ibank nationwide
lending network has over 300 participating lenders of various sizes and types, Mr. Markel noted.
Borrowers can input the category of loan they want into the Lending Center on
the ibank homepage. The site also needs loan type, dollar amount and location.
The advanced search feature returns a list of lenders where the borrower has to
do all of the contact work. The professional search feature allows the borrower to input the data once, which will
be distributed to 15 nationwide lenders, the site said. The lenders will then contact the applicant with its terms.
With the advanced search, the organic lender list is comprised of information
taken online from lender websites by the www.ibank.com Web crawler. Lenders wishing to rank higher on the organic list can sign up for free on
the www.ibank.com database.
The Classified Campaign Lender list consists of lenders who pay for placement
in the classified section of the search engine.
The Premier Campaign Lender consists of lenders who have taken a more proactive
approach by registering with www.ibank.com and creating targeted campaigns, which deliver hot prospects directly to their computers
each day. Premier Campaign Lenders can specifically target small businesses borrowers by designating up to 16 prequalification
questions, including loan size, loan amount, credit score, years in business, loan to value, location, industry,
loan or lease type.
The lenders in the Classified filter fund one in 10 loan applications. Premier
filter lenders fund one in seven.
It is a completely paperless company, Mr. Markel stressed. Traditionally, applications
and supporting information were hand delivered, faxed or mailed, he said. The information input into ibank is captured
and put into a secure vault. Thus it moves seamlessly through the process, he continued.
The engine, he said, is a cost effective way for commercial lenders to find the
customer that they want to deal with.
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