Team Virginia

This is the first in a series of posts from our Underwriting Operations in Virginia. Tom McCammon, our esteemed underwriter, will be discussing all things On Deck. 

If you’ve ever received a phone call from an On Deck loan processor, underwriter, customer service rep or loan closer, you’ve probably noticed the New York City area code, 212, but we’re in Virginia! Located just a few miles from downtown Washington, DC, in Arlington, is our Virginia operations center. Every loan that On Deck evaluates comes through our office. We love our jobs and take pride in the fact that we are an essential facet in connecting Main Street businesses with the capital they need to make their business a success.

Coming from a commercial lending background before landing at On Deck as an underwriter, I’m well aware of the hurdles and setbacks that often hobble small business owners when seeking capital for their business. Banks lean heavily of personal credit scores and financial statements that several months to over a year old, which may ignore positive, recent changes to business operations, and aren’t the most reliable indicators of business’ ability to repay their debts. Further, traditional bank lending is often cumbersome, duplicative, and moves as slow as molasses in January.

This is what makes On Deck such a great development for small business lending. Using recent, pertinent financial data and our cutting edge business evaluation model, we can make smart, effective credit decisions in hours, not weeks, with funding in as little as 48 hours. Further, this efficiency and technical approach to risk management reduces our costs versus those of our competitors and allows us to pass those savings on to our customers.

A universal maxim for production and productivity is often expressed as “Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick two.” Here at On Deck, we like to think we are changing the game by offering all three to our customers, and based on the feedback we get daily from our customers and business partners, we think we’re making great strides towards it.