Bank of the Pacific, a community bank with 8 commercial banking centers and 18 retail operations across Western Washington and Northwest Oregon, realized its current system was not delivering the functionality or efficiency the bank required, and entered into a search for a new set of solutions. The bank sought a powerful CRM (customer relationship manager) that would optimize its use of data and offer greater transparency into its pipeline. With employees spending time on retrieving data from the core system, manually entering data into Excel, and deriving loan documents from credit memos in different formats, the bank also needed a loan origination system that would add uniformity to its credit presentations and make the creation of credit memos and documents, and management of existing loans more efficient. The announcement of the required adoption of the CECL (current expected credit loss) model also precipitated the bank’s third goal; to find an automated solution for its allowance for loan and lease losses in compliance with the new standard.

As an educated buyer that has experienced disappointment with past vendors, Bank of the Pacific had a clear vision in its search. The bank sought a vendor that offered software with an intuitive user interface, presented a track record of delivering on promised functionalities and, most importantly, provided a wealth of high-caliber onboarding resources. Over a 10-month period the bank did extensive research, ultimately identifying Sageworks Banking Platform to meet its needs. 

Though two separate teams at the bank were vetting lending and ALLL (allowance for loan and lease losses) solutions, both came to the conclusion that Sageworks was the optimal choice for meeting their goals. Bank of the Pacific now looks forward to utilizing a single platform for automating the entire life of the loan in addition to CRM, workflow automation and reporting capabilities. Sageworks Banking Platform will create a faster, streamlined set of processes the bank hopes will propel its success and future growth.

“Our employees come first in our mission statement,” explained G. Walker Evans, EVP & Commercial Banking Manager at Bank of the Pacific. “Our staff are committed to success, they’re motivated, and they are entrepreneurial. If we can set them up with the best, most efficient tools to make them better producers, they’re going to be more satisfied given increased bandwidth to attract and serve more customers, and they are going to do a darn good job taking care of customers who come next in our mission. With the resulting revenue growth, we’ll then take care of our shareholders and also reinvest in our community as both are also key parts of our mission. That kind expertise and can-do attitude we saw in Sageworks during due diligence and now during implementation. Working with Sageworks has been delightful so far, and we’re looking forward to what the future holds.”

“Bank of the Pacific is a savvy group of buyers who knows what they’re looking for in a partner” commented Jay Blandford, Sageworks’ President. “We’re glad that the bank recognized Sageworks’ potential to empower them with the right tools and guide them in their transformation, and we look forward to seeing them reach their goals for business development.”