Same Team, More Loans

A loan is paperwork before it's money. At Customers Bancorp, the paperwork moves faster now.

On the bank's Q3 earnings call on October 23, CEO Samvir Sidhu said AI-powered loan underwriting changed the work. "The cycle time for this process is down 95%," he said. "This will allow the same team to handle significantly more loan throughput." He gave no baseline.

He gave a running total too. "Cumulative estimated hours saved have now grown to 76 thousand," Sidhu said.

Every banker knows the feeling. The deal is ready and the paperwork isn't. Those waiting hours go somewhere else now.

Look at the word "estimated." The bank's own footnote says where it comes from: employees surveyed on their own time saved, not validated. That's honest of them, and it's the reason the index can't do more than report it.

The bank also rebuilt how it opens commercial deposit accounts and piloted it in 10 weeks. On the call, Sidhu said the new process opens complex commercial accounts in minutes, compared with days at other institutions. "That represents an >90% reduction in cycle time." The comparison is with other banks, not its own old process.

What the Index says: an on-record claim from the top of the bank, with no baseline, and hours counted by the people who saved them. Worth reporting. Worth checking.

Same team, more loans. That's the claim. The index will believe it when the throughput shows up.