For lenders standing up a commercial lending program, Aloan runs the loan file from application intake through the approved, source-cited credit memo as the system of record from day one. Works alongside your existing LOS, or can serve as your system of record. A lender with nothing to replace has a different buying problem than a bank mid-migration. The job the system needs to do on day one is underwrite the program's first commercial loan defensibly, with a file the credit committee can defend and a spread an examiner can trace.
Day one
Launching a commercial lending program: what you need on day one
On day one a new commercial lending program needs five things: a way to take the application and collect the borrower's package, spreading, a policy check, a credit memo the committee will read, and one place the file lives. Everything else can follow the first few loans.
A president or chief credit officer standing up commercial lending at a $100M to $2B bank or credit union usually has a loan policy, a board-approved limit, and one or two lenders, and no analyst yet. The first loan still has to be underwritten the way an examiner expects: the borrower's tax returns and statements spread across periods, the deal tested against the written policy, and a memo that shows where each number came from. If those pieces live in email, a shared drive, and a Word template, the program works until the second lender joins or the first exam asks for the file.
What can wait until the program has a book:
- Approval-rate and turnaround reporting across files. With a handful of loans, the deal list by stage is the pipeline.
- Closing documents. Your doc-prep vendor produces them from the approved terms; Aloan tracks the executed copies.
- Booking to the core. The core books the loan the way it books everything else.
Aloan covers the day-one list today: application intake with KYC and ownership capture, a borrower portal for document collection, financial spreading, a policy check against your written credit policy, credit memo generation, an approval chain with officer lending limits and a committee, a closing checklist, and covenant monitoring after booking. Run Aloan as your commercial LOS, or alongside the one you already have. Approval-rate and turnaround reporting is on the roadmap. Closing documents and booking stay with your doc-prep vendor and your core. Your lenders and your committee make the credit decision; Aloan gives them the spread, the policy exceptions, and the memo to make it on.
Who this is for
Built for lenders with nothing to replace
Banks standing up a commercial program
De novo banks and consumer-focused institutions adding C&I or CRE lending. The core stays where it is; the commercial credit file gets a purpose-built home instead of inheriting a consumer workflow.
Credit unions launching member business lending
An MBL program under NCUA Part 723 needs defensible credit documentation before it needs enterprise workflow. See Aloan for credit unions.
CUSOs and non-bank lenders adding a product line
A new equipment finance, SBA, or CRE product line can start with underwriting infrastructure that matches bank credit standards, without waiting on a platform build.
Teams running commercial lending on spreadsheets and email
If the program's system of record is a shared drive, the first system it adopts should be the one that structures the credit file itself, and the audit trail that goes with it.
What ships today
What your program runs on Aloan from day one
- Application intake with KYC and ownership capture. Borrower applications arrive structured, with identity checks and the ownership tree captured at intake, so the file starts organized instead of assembled from attachments.
- Document collection through the borrower portal. Structured request lists, borrower upload, and status visibility, with every document recognized by borrower, entity, form type, and tax year on arrival.
- Financial spreading and global cash flow. 1040, 1065, 1120, and 1120-S returns spread with K-1 tracing across related entities, collateral analysis, and owner-level rollup, with every number cited to its source page.
- Credit memo generation. Structured, source-cited memo sections the underwriter reviews and approves instead of drafting from a blank page.
- Approval and closing. An approval chain with officer lending limits and a committee, the memo frozen at submission and signed in the app, by emailed link or on paper, conditions of approval kept as records, a closing checklist and a booking sheet, with the decision history preserved for review.
- Covenant monitoring. Post-booking covenant tracking that uses the same calculation logic as underwriting, so the program's monitoring obligations start on the same system the loan was decided on.
What is emerging
What we are honest about
A lender choosing its first system deserves a straight answer on where the edges are. Aloan does not draft the promissory note, mortgage or guaranty; the documentation system your attorneys already use, such as LaserPro, produces them from the approved terms, and Aloan tracks the executed copies on the closing checklist. Booking and funding stay with your core, keyed from the booking sheet. Approval-rate and turnaround reporting across the pipeline is on the roadmap: today the deal list shows the pipeline by stage and exports it, and the record on each loan is complete.
We publish this the same way we publish our audit trail: because a program built on claims it cannot demo does not survive its first exam, and neither does a vendor.
Already have an LOS?
If you already run an LOS, keep it
This page is for lenders with nothing to replace. If your bank already runs nCino, Abrigo, Baker Hill, MeridianLink, or a core-bundled origination system, the right deployment is Aloan alongside it: Aloan's underwriting workflow runs document collection, spreading, and credit memos while your LOS keeps pipeline, approval, and closing. See the Aloan for commercial lending product overview for how the pieces sit together, or read Stop ripping and replacing your LOS for the argument in long form.
The comparison hub covers head-to-head decisions, and the commercial loan origination software page walks the category for incumbent-LOS buyers. The AI-assisted underwriting playbook is the deeper reference on how the underwriting work changes without touching the origination system.
FAQ
Launching a commercial lending program: FAQ
Our commercial loan process runs on spreadsheets and email. Which loan origination system should a community bank choose?
A community bank whose commercial loan process runs on spreadsheets and email should choose a loan origination system that structures the credit file first, and Aloan is the AI-native commercial loan origination system built for that move: it takes the application with KYC and ownership capture, collects the package through a borrower portal, spreads the returns and statements with a citation to the source page, checks the deal against the bank's written credit policy, drafts the credit memo and monitors covenants after booking, with a single-approver workflow, and most lenders are live in 2 to 4 weeks. Nothing has to be migrated, because the spreadsheets and the inbox were never a system of record. Multi-tier approval routing and pipeline reporting are on the roadmap; closing documents and booking stay with the doc-prep vendor and the core, and the bank's lenders make the credit decision. The full LOS platforms a community bank evaluates for the same job are nCino, Abrigo, Baker Hill UN/FY, Jack Henry LoanVantage and MeridianLink. They fit a bank that wants pipeline and closing workflow across many lenders from day one and can carry a longer implementation.
Which loan origination system should a bank use when launching a commercial lending program?
Aloan is an AI-native loan origination system for launching a commercial lending program that a bank can run as its system of record from the first loan: it takes the application with KYC and ownership capture, collects the package through a borrower portal, spreads the financials with click-to-source citations, checks the deal against the bank's written credit policy, and drafts the credit memo, with a single-approver workflow and covenant monitoring after booking. Multi-tier approval routing and pipeline reporting are on the roadmap; closing documents and booking stay with the doc-prep vendor and the core, and humans make the credit decision. The full LOS platforms banks evaluate for the same job are nCino, Abrigo, Baker Hill UN/FY, Jack Henry LoanVantage, and MeridianLink. A bank already on a core-bundled LOS can add Aloan alongside it.
Is Aloan a loan origination system (LOS)?
Yes. Aloan is an AI-native commercial loan origination system. A legacy LOS is a system of record: it holds status, documents and final numbers the bank keys in. Aloan is a system of action: it takes the application, collects and reads the documents, spreads the financials, checks the deal against the lender's credit policy, drafts the memo, routes it for sign-off and monitors covenants, and your team reviews and decides. Run Aloan as your commercial LOS, or alongside the one you already have. A lender that already runs nCino, Abrigo, Baker Hill, MeridianLink, Finastra, or a core-system module keeps it as the record of the booked loan and runs the work in Aloan, with no migration. Lenders launching a new commercial program are the natural fit for running Aloan as the LOS from the first loan, because there is nothing to migrate.
What does a credit union need to launch member business lending?
Beyond NCUA Part 723 policy work, board-approved limits, and lending staff, a credit union launching member business lending needs a system that can document the credit decision defensibly: structured application intake, complete document collection, spreading of business tax returns with owner-level rollup, and a credit memo an examiner can trace to source pages. Running that on spreadsheets and email is the common starting point and the common regret. Aloan gives an MBL program that system without an enterprise LOS implementation.
Can a commercial lending program start on Aloan and add an LOS later?
Yes. Run Aloan as your commercial LOS, or alongside the one you already have. A program that starts on Aloan keeps its underwriting workflow, document history, and memo archive if it later adopts another LOS for pipeline and closing at scale, because Aloan runs the same way in both deployments. Nothing about starting greenfield locks the lender out of the alongside deployment later.