We are asking for guidance from any lender who has centralized consumer and/or small business lending. What are the major hurdles encountered? How long have you been centralized and how is it working? What problems have you had with staffing as you take lending authority away from current lenders, or did you? Is the change to centralization transparent to your customers? Why did you centralize? Where is the industry heading?
Thanks, Please respond to kstricker@ephratanationalbank.com

I previously worked for a a bank that went to centralized loan processing due to problems in the loan portfolio. The transition to the centralized processing met a lot of resistance from the banches in the begining. As time passed, the branches found that they could actually get an answer as quick, if not quicker, with the centralization. The branches actually ended up liking the centralization because it took a lot of paper work out of the branches. The main concern with the centralization is the override authority. There needs to be a person that understands the area, and makes good loan decisions, that has the authority to override denials from the centralized unit. It appears that centralization works well for the consumer loans. I did not work with the the commerical loans, but I do know they were trying centralization with certain sized loans.