From 37% to 72%: How Entech Helped a Student Lending Leader Reach $1B in Annual Loan Volume
- Oct 17, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 28
Executive Summary
A Major U.S. Retail Bank had the customer base and market position to compete aggressively in personal lending. What it didn't have was the technology infrastructure to move fast enough to capture that opportunity. Legacy systems were holding back loan volume and revenue growth at a time when digital-first competitors were setting the pace.
The bank partnered with Entech to launch a new personal loan product from the ground up, with an ambitious target: $1 billion in annual loan volume. The results arrived faster than expected. User conversion nearly doubled, from 37% to 72%, within two months of launch. Revenue doubled in that same window. And the bank reached its $1 billion volume target within two years.
The turnaround came down to three things working in concert: the right technology platform, the right delivery team, and an Agile Scrum model built for speed and iteration.
Client Background
The bank is one of the largest and oldest retail banking institutions in the United States, serving millions of consumers nationwide. Its portfolio spans personal lending, student and education refinance, home equity, auto lending, wealth management, and everyday banking services.
With a multi-state consumer footprint of roughly 1,000 branches, the bank operates a full digital and mobile banking business alongside its physical presence, including online banking, a full-service contact center, and an extensive ATM network across more than a dozen states. Its established position in student lending and education refinance had already earned it recognition as a leader in that space. The mandate now was to bring that same authority to consumer lending through a digital-first growth strategy.
Business Challenge
Ambition alone doesn't move loan volume. The bank's internal infrastructure simply couldn't scale fast enough to support the lending growth the business needed. Every new product or process improvement moved at the pace of legacy systems, not market demand.
The stakes were clear: launch a new personal loan product and scale it to $1 billion in annual volume. To get there, the bank set four objectives:
Rapidly increase loan applications across acquisition channels
Simplify the user journey through the application process
Build technology that could respond quickly to market change
Establish a repeatable platform and process for future product expansion
That last point mattered as much as the first three. This wasn't just about shipping one product. It was about building a foundation the bank could build on.
Solution Approach
Entech's approach centered on a simple premise: speed and quality aren't a trade-off if you have the right foundation. The team delivered a simplified, robust lending solution built at enterprise scale, capable of supporting the bank's growth well beyond the initial launch.
Three elements made that possible:
The right platform: A technology foundation designed for scale from day one, not retrofitted after the fact.
The right team: A dedicated delivery pod that didn't disband after launch. The same team that built the product stayed with it, continuously adding enhancements and integrating new capabilities, including partnerships with Plaid and Accertify, to keep the product competitive as the market shifted.
The right delivery model: Agile Scrum gave the team a structure for constant iteration, with clearly defined performance indicators tracked throughout delivery so progress was never a guessing game.
The design also anticipated what came next. Because the platform and process were built to extend, the bank could expand into additional lending products without starting from scratch, turning a single launch into a repeatable growth engine.
Implementation Process
Speed to market was the first proof point. The personal loan product went from concept to live in the market in approximately three months, an aggressive timeline that put the bank in direct competition with faster-moving digital lenders almost immediately.
Agile Scrum delivery kept that momentum going after launch. Rather than a single release followed by maintenance mode, the team worked in continuous iteration cycles, shipping more marketable features with each release and adjusting based on real performance data.
Business Outcomes
The results validated the approach at every stage:
Conversion nearly doubled: User conversion rate climbed from 37% to 72% within two months of the product's release.
Revenue doubled: Revenue doubled in the first two months following launch.
The billion-dollar target was met: The bank reached $1 billion in annual loan volume within two years of launch, a benchmark that validated the platform, the team, and the model behind it.
Beyond the headline numbers, the engagement left the bank with lasting capability: a dedicated team continuing to iterate on the product, a platform built to support new integrations, and a repeatable process ready to power the bank's next lending product.
The Takeaway
Infrastructure constraints don't just slow down one product launch. They cap what a business can become. By pairing a scalable platform with a dedicated team and an iterative delivery model, the bank didn't just hit a growth target. It built a lending engine designed to keep performing long after the first release.
