Wilmington-based software company nCino is continuing to grow and add new features to its Bank Operating System, including an automated loan decision tool.

Its new Loan Auto Decision enables the company’s customers “to compete against marketplace lenders with digital optimization, speed and compliance,” in making business loans, according to a news release.

The automated system provides a rapid response to a loan application, said Kathryn Cook, spokeswoman for nCino, a spin-off of Wilmington’s Live Oak Bank

“Through this automated decision engine, bankers can make almost real-time decisions: auto approve, auto decline or manually review,” she said, noting that online lending clubs and alternative lenders, which have emerged in the past several years, are becoming more of a market presence. “They are not bank lenders, not financial institutions, but their advantage is the speed at which they can approve and fund a loan. [The loan] may be at a higher rate, but the speed and convenience that these online lenders offer may make it worth it to the borrower.”

Loan Auto Decision, which is built into the Bank Operating System, gives nCino customers the tools and technology to speed up its lending process, company officials said.

nCino customer banks and credit unions can “automatically run loan requests against their existing, proven credit policies to render decisions and provide consumers with funds faster than ever before,” the release stated.

“It increases the bank’s efficiency during the loan underwriting process and is especially helpful for smaller businesses,” Cook added.

The Loan Auto Decision feature is just one of several additions nCino has made in the past year to its system.

In the spring of 2016, nCino introduced Deposit Account Opening. Also a new feature of the Bank Operating System, Deposit Account Opening takes the company’s cloud platform into its customers’ branches to facilitate deposit growth and to streamline the account opening process for consumers, according to the release.

“Landmark innovations became part of the Bank Operating System in 2016, expanding nCino’s existing relationships with new offerings and moving closer to becoming a financial institution’s single platform for effective digital engagement across all lines of business,” officials said in a news release.

Other highlights of the year, as reported by nCino’s included:

• ending 2016 with more than 130 financial institutions in its portfolio, including enterprise financial institutions, such as $125 billion-asset Regions Bank;
• demonstrating that it could successfully deploy the Bank Operating System across various functions in a large, multi-state bank, as shown in its experience with SunTrust Bank, which has $205 billion in assets;
• expanding its workforce to 265 employees, including the hiring of its first CFO, Jeff Babka, and its new executive vice president of product development and engineering, Trisha Price. In mid-2015, nCino employed about 150 people.

This year also started off with a bigger audience for the company’s technology.
In early February, nCino demoed its cloud-based platform at FinovateEurope, a conference focused on banking and financial technology. The presentation at the London conference marked the formal debut of the company’s platform to international markets, officials said.

“[2017] will bring even more product innovation, customer growth and company expansion as nCino pushes the boundaries of what our technology can do and how much it can transform and digitally optimize the banking experience,” CEO Pierre Naude said in a statement.