Pub. 9 2020 Issue 3

L E A D I N G A D V O C A T E F O R T H E B A N K I N G I N D U S T R Y I N K A N S A S 18 THE BHG LOAN HUB: DELIVERING FINQUANT TO COMMUNITY BANKS By Chris Panebianco, Chief Marketing Officer, Bankers Healthcare Group W hile community banks historically have considered alternative lenders as competition, that mindset is evolving. Today, countless local banks are reaping the benefits of partnerships with nontraditional lenders. However, not all alternative lenders are created equally; there are shiny new ones popping up regularly while others have been around for decades. Some are running as fast as they can and learning as they go, while others function to match the quality of a traditional lender, with a close eye on compliance. One alternative lender that has made a nearly two-decade impact with community banks is Bankers Healthcare Group, a leading provider of financial solutions for licensed healthcare practitioners and highly- skilled professionals. While BHG is neither a true fintech nor a traditional bank, it has the best parts of each— data, analytics, technology, marketing, underwriting, compliance, speed and customer service. This combination has led to BHG originating record volume from today’s essential professional workers: high-earning borrowers with top-tier credit scores. Today, BHG works with more than 15,000 of these coveted borrowers each month through its marketplace, with a record $429M funded in Q1 of 2020. April continued the trend with over $188 million in loans sold through the BHG Loan Hub, a state-of-the-art loan delivery platform exclusively for community banks to buy. The 1,100 and growing bank network gets access to high-quality medical and professional loans — earning a solid return of 4-6.5% — and over the course of 19 years, no bank has ever taken a loss on the BHG Core Loan portfolio. Driven by Data and Insights BHG has carved its own niche as a financial quantitative service company, or FinQuant for short. BHG uses quantitative analysis to determine the performance potential of every borrower and the price risk. Utilizing a large division of some of the brightest minds in analytics from the top universities and companies in the country, as well as over $25 billion in underwritten loans, they have gained unmatched insight into its borrower characteristics, performance and their industries. BHG’s analytics department has acquired an enormous amount of data during the past 19 years. The insights are used to target millions of professionals and to design the types of financial products they want. The 40-person analytics team works closely with BHG’s full-service, in-house marketing department to develop highly targeted campaigns to millions of professionals through various mediums. But It Didn’t Come Overnight, and It Didn’t Come Without a Lot of Hard Work Founded in 2001, Al Crawford’s focus has been on building relationships with community banks, while his partners brought incredible knowledge of the healthcare industry. They identified an opportunity: Doctors, dentists, veterinarians and nurses needed commercial loans, but