Background

BayFirst Financial is a premier small business lender located in Tampa Bay, FL with a growing network of banking centers around the region.  Since opening in 1999, BayFirst has grown into one of the top nationwide SBA lenders with more than $1 billion in small business loans through its SBA lending program.

The Challenge

BayFirst needed an online lending experience tailored to fit their extensive credit policies, workflow and application velocity.  They had a glaring need for nimble technology that offered best-in-class platform navigation and organized SBA document management to drive quick access to capital for their clients.

Additionally, BayFirst needed a platform to support SBA lending efforts in different market caps including their Bolt SBA Loans (up to $150,000), FlashCap (up to $350,000) and Premier (up to $5 million).

Brandi Jaber

“The specific need that we went out to Biz2x was a loan origination system that could scale and handle our workflow efficiently.”
Brandi Jaber – Chief Production Officer

Solution

BayFirst chose Biz2X to support growing lending demand from business owners for SBA loans through their separately branded SBA platform, CreditBench. With Biz2X, BayFirst can offer a seamless digital experience with industry leading turnaround times to support clients’ needs for fast access to capital.

Kiril Dimov

“The Biz2X platform allowed us to become more tech-forward with automation. Reducing clicks and keystrokes was a huge benefit, and we’ve been able to process loans faster.”
Kiril Dimov – Director of the Small Business Loan Program

The digital journey incorporates many of B2X’s integrations in addition to a wide array of the product modules and functionalities.  With ongoing initiatives into 2024 and beyond, BayFirst continues to add to their Biz2X product suite to accommodate exponential volume growth in ’23.

“The Broker Portal through The Biz2X platform has benefited our overall volume by providing transparency, security and pipeline management to our broker community, which is really what they need when they’re submitting loans to lenders like us.”
Brandi Jaber – Chief Production Officer

The Results

BayFirst went live with Biz2X in March 2022 and experienced an immediate impact.  In October of 2023, the bank saw an even greater uptick in usage of Biz2X throughout all their banking divisions contributing to a staggering application creation rate of 50 new apps a day.

  • Top 5 SBA lenders across nation in 2023
  • 50+ new applications created daily in Biz2X.
  • Over 3500 decisioned applications in 2023.
  • App creation to decision time: 16 days