Thank You
Suntell CEO Corner
2018 is now history and 2019 is upon us, ready or not. We just wrapped up a record year in terms of new customers and achieving new financial milestones. 2018 by all accounts was a very good year for Suntell. I hope it was for you as well! My excitement for 2019 has been growing with each passing month and day. My excitement can be traced back to 2012 when we made a decision to invest heavily in the loan origination system (LOS) portion of the Square 1 Credit Suite (SQ1CS).
The genesis of the SQ1CS was always more heavily skewed toward the loan management system (LMS). The LMS focus included the document tracking, problem loan management, collections, portfolio reporting and tools. The LOS system side of the SQ1CS was at the time, limited in it’s flexibility to meet the demands of the market place for LOS solutions. 2019 will mark the final stages of the LOS investments that began back in 2012 and has evolved the SQ1CS to a very flexible and sophisticated LOS solution for all types and sizes of community focused financial institutions in every geographical area.
The LOS solution now supports virtually every type of credit presentation configuration possible to meet each institution’s unique credit and board loan committee needs; from simple to complex. Analysis tools and reports for commercial loans, including CRE and C&I loans, have all been enhanced as part of this multi-year project. Our goal was to provide greater flexibility and improved analysis of both simple and complex commercial and agricultural related credits with improved data flow between tax schedules. Stress testing at both the loan and portfolio level was also included in this project.
2019 will mark the final releases of the upgrades to AgExam which will more tightly integrate the agricultural analysis tools and system into the overall credit analysis with added enhancement focus on global cash flow analysis of multiple customers or entities spreads, customizable ratio analysis, and accrual cash flow analysis and calculations. Once the Ag analysis releases are finalized, we will officially bring to a close the plan put into place in 2012 to become, what I believe is, the premier LOS and LMS system for the community focused financial institution involved in commercial and/or agricultural lending.
Parallel to this multi-year build-out of the LOS portion of the SQ1CS was the need for us to continue to meet the needs of an evolving market for new financial solutions. In partnership with Young & Associates, Inc., we currently provide support for their Portfolio Stress Testing system for commercial loans. In 2019, we will be releasing support, through a separately licensed extract interface, to provide data to support your institutions ALLL-CECL calculations. In addition, we will be releasing a new product that will be able to read tax generated PDF forms into the credit analysis area of the SQ1CS. This new product will represent a tremendous time savings and efficiency for the credit analyst users of our system. This added efficiency is in line with our original founding vision to bring greater efficiency to commercial and agricultural underwriting, origination, and servicing.
This supports why I have a particular excitement for 2019 and beyond. Not only do I believe the SQ1CS represents the best solution on the market for the community financial focused institution, but we have the most flexible delivery in both software and cloud hosted solutions with the most cost effective and flexible licensing. To round this out, we continue to receive high marks from our customers on our service and support as determined by our annual customer surveys asking for feedback and rankings.
If you haven’t noticed by now, I have tremendous pride and confidence in what we have built at Suntell and how we have evolved the SQ1CS over the years. As we enter 2019, we will be reaching our 23rd year since I founded the company. I would not have this level of pride and confidence or this amount of longevity without the great and long-time loyal employees that work here at Suntell. Finally, I must take time to say ‘Thank You’ to our customers. They have been with us through both bad and good times and have stayed by our side. Let me end here on that note to everyone that has had some part or role in me being able to write this note at this time in our company history – Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!
By Duane Lankard
Suntell CEO
