operations / processes / loan-origination edited 2 days ago

Loan origination — end-to-end

Last reviewed by Mara · 1 200 words · 6 min read

Operations rolled out the redesigned loan-origination flow at the start of 2025. The diagram below is a directly-follows graph derived from the first six months of cases — every node is an activity in the funnel, every edge a transition between activities, and the thickness of each edge tracks how often that transition occurred.

The happy path. Application Submitted → Credit Check → Document Collection → Initial Review → Property Appraisal → Conditional Approval → Clear to Close → Loan Funded. Roughly half of cases take it straight through; the rest deviate.

The interesting structure lives in the underwriting loop. When Underwriting requests additional documents, the case re-enters the funnel at Documents Received and is re-underwritten — sometimes more than once. That loop is where most cycle-time accumulates, and is the team's current improvement target.

Live diagram · loan origination (n = 2 500)

This page opens with one Direct Funding case pre-traced — the floating panel at top-right walks through every event for that specific loan in chronological order, with the resource who handled each step. Hover any row to highlight the matching node in the diagram; pick another case from the ▾ Case picker to swap.

To see the underwriting loop light up, toggle the ▾ Mode pill to Mean (time): bottleneck edges interpolate to amber, and terminal nodes — Funded, Declined, Withdrawn — show the average total time a case spent in the funnel before reaching that outcome.