Metriciti, A Commercial Lending Platform Built for Community Banking

ChoiceOne Bank

Pictured from left to right: Josh Hucul, ChoiceOne Bank Vice President Lending Technology; Dan McGraw, DPT Solutions Chief Executive Officer; and Adom Greenland, ChoiceOne Bank Executive Vice President Chief Financial Officer.




As seen in PR Newswire.


SPARTA, Mich., and GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., July 15, 2024 – ChoiceOne Financial Services, Inc., and ChoiceOne Bank (NASDAQ: COFS) (“ChoiceOne”) along with DPT Solutions (DPT) are pleased to announce their partnership to offer Metriciti. Metriciti is a revolutionary commercial lending platform that promises to redefine how financial institutions manage their lending from leads to closings and beyond. DPT is the exclusive reseller of Metriciti and is now available to community banks nationwide.

 

“In an industry where innovation often feels out of reach for smaller players, ChoiceOne took an ambitious leap and transformed a challenge into a groundbreaking opportunity,” said ChoiceOne CEO Kelly Potes. “Faced with the limitations of existing commercial lending platforms for community banks, ChoiceOne developed our own solution. Building Metriciti was a strategic move we made that has already reshaped our future. Now we are pleased to offer the opportunity for other community banks to explore Metriciti through our exclusive reseller, DPT Solutions.”

 

Driven by the need to address critical gaps in the market, Metriciti was built by ChoiceOne to provide a seamless integration of sales management tools, mobile app, underwriting with automation in financial spreading, portfolio management, robust data reporting and analytics, integration with Microsoft 365 and other third parties to provide a commercial loan origination platform built with end users in mind. Developed internally over the past four years, Metriciti has played an integral role in driving ChoiceOne’s loan growth. What started as an ambitious idea has now led to an opportunity to share Metriciti with other financial institutions seeking enhanced efficiency and technology that can scale with growth demands.

 

“ChoiceOne’s journey began nearly 10 years ago as an unhappy client of a large a legacy loan origination platform,” said ChoiceOne Vice President, Lending Technology Josh Hucul and the lead on the Metriciti project from the beginning. “We were frustrated with inefficiencies, lack of flexibility, no voice in product improvements, data that was trapped, and a lack of complete features and functionality needed to compete. We knew there had to be a better way, even if we had to build it ourselves.”

 

ChoiceOne has a history of partnering with local tech firms to create innovative services and support Michigan entrepreneurs and small business owners. This history would prove remarkable starting in 2019. While in the midst of Covid-19 and two bank acquisitions, ChoiceOne emerged with Metriciti – a game-changer for community banks.

 

“With a mindset that we could build better, common sense, processes to streamline lending and ultimately not settle for the status quo of being forced into a box that other traditional vendors would have placed us in, we began to build Metriciti,” said Hucul. “Because commercial loans are a dominant portion of our balance sheet, we needed a platform that could scale with our growth in the long-term.”

 

After much research, a proposal was built for an end-to-end solution built on top of a well-known CRM, Microsoft Dynamics. To make the project happen, ChoiceOne turned to DPT, a local Microsoft Partner with deep expertise in business process consulting and a track record of building complex custom configurations in Microsoft Dynamics.

 

“Selecting the right partner was critical and it was clear that DPT could fullfill the requirements we needed and build Metriciti,” Hucul noted. “While nothing existed on the market, a platform built on the infrastructure of Microsoft was a perfect match. It would fit seamlessly into existing Microsoft products that ChoiceOne subscribed to, it was a cloud-based solution, full CRM and sales management tools, an open platform to integrate to and from third parties, fully customizable and configurable, and allowed us to access all the data that we collect and marry it to other data we had across the Bank.”

 

In early 2023, a bank was referred to ChoiceOne via DPT to take a look at the platform they had built as they were investigating a similar path. The results and feedback of those discussions led ChoiceOne to travel down a path they had only faintly envisioned – selling Metriciti to other financial institutions.

 

As a result, ChoiceOne and DPT began ‘re-building’ Metriciti into a new structure that would allow for other institutions to purchase the platform and benefit from the product that ChoiceOne and DPT had created. ChoiceOne spun the intellectual property into a new entity, continuing to manage the product roadmap, and enlisted DPT to be the exclusive reseller of Metriciti, handling all sales, implementation and support.

 

Today, through DPT, the partners are offering Metriciti to the marketplace. The early interest exceeded the partners’ expectations, and they are building a significant pipeline of financial institutions in varying stages of their buying cycle.

 

“The demand in the marketplace is strong for a new commercial lending platform that doesn’t conform to the traditional mold,” said Hucul. “Banks are realizing that disparate systems and manual processes don’t add the value that is needed to be successful today. These banks are also realizing that the user experience is critical for both customers and internal users, something most platforms fail to deliver.”

 

DPT is a technology and consulting firm with 20 years in business. “We are pleased to partner with ChoiceOne and work with other financial institutions,” said DPT Solutions Chief Executive Officer Dan McGraw. “DPT is known for building human-centered solutions. As the exclusive reseller of Metriciti, our team will work exclusively with financial institutions to ensure their details have been considered, challenged, documented, and executed. We will also provide ongoing support. Our vision is to usher in a new era of financial services. We believe that financial institutions will not only need to keep pace with change but lead it.”

 

ChoiceOne set out to develop technology that would allow it to control its own destiny and scale up as the Bank grew. “From the original discussions with DPT in 2020, ChoiceOne grew assets from approximately $600 million to now $2.7 billion with commercial lending being a considerable portion of asset growth,” said ChoiceOne Executive Vice President, Chief Lending Officer, Brad Henion. “The technology was not simply a way to build something different, it was a way to drive desired outcomes at the Bank. We needed tools that would drive loan growth and profitability through efficiencies and top tier relationships and sales management. ChoiceOne needed flexibility to adapt to our changing market demands – from customers, regulators, and even the labor market. With Metriciti, we’ve been able to process over $3 billion in commercial loans while adding sales staff and reducing support staff.”

 

ChoiceOne President Michael J. Burke, Jr. commented, “Community banks are vital to local businesses and economies. Often, we are underserved in the technology platforms that are best suited for how we operate as a bank. Ultimately there was a gap that ChoiceOne identified in our commercial loan origination platform, and we decided to fulfill our own needs. Metriciti is critical for our long-term success with data becoming more important, clients relationships becoming more competitive, and labor being more difficult to attract and retain. Now Metriciti can be a game changer for other likeminded community banks.”


For additional information visit metriciti.com/

 

About DPT Solutions

With 20 years in business, DPT Solutions is owned and operated in West Michigan. DPT employs a team of visionaries, business strategists and technology innovators who have held senior leadership positions across various industries and business sizes. DPT’s combined business strategy team has over 100 years of experience working in senior leadership positions. Because of this experience, DPT doesn’t only talk strategy, they understand the challenges and have the knowledge and network to solve them. Leading with “why” is what makes DPT different. For more information, please visit https://dptsolutions.com/metriciti.
 

About ChoiceOne 

ChoiceOne Financial Services, Inc. is a financial holding company headquartered in Sparta, Michigan, and the parent corporation of ChoiceOne Bank. Member FDIC. ChoiceOne Bank operates 35 offices in parts of Kent, Ottawa, Muskegon, Newaygo, Lapeer, St. Clair, Macomb, and Oakland counties. ChoiceOne is an approximately $2.7 billion-asset bank holding company making it the eighth largest bank holding company in Michigan based on asset size. ChoiceOne Bank offers insurance and investment products through its subsidiary, ChoiceOne Insurance Agencies, Inc. ChoiceOne Financial Services, Inc. common stock is quoted on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol “COFS.” For more information, please visit Investor Relations at ChoiceOne’s website choiceone.bank.

 

Contacts

Kelly Potes

ChoiceOne Chief Executive Officer

616-887-7366
kpotes@choiceone.bank

 

Michael J. Burke, Jr.

ChoiceOne President

810.664.2977

michael.burke@choiceone.bank

 

Dan McGraw,

DPT Solutions Chief Executive Officer

616.818.7199

dmcgraw@dptsolutions.com

 

Josh Hucul
ChoiceOne Vice President, Lending Technology
616.887.3725

jhucul@choiceone.bank

Josh Hucul and Kelly Potes receive award.

ChoiceOne Bank’s Josh Hucul Receives CBM Rising Star Award

By Nancy Runyan • October 3, 2024
Josh Hucul, Vice President, Lending Technology, has received the 2024 Rising Star Award for his significant achievements in developing Metriciti.

ChoiceOne created a software platform to speed up business lending.

By Crain's Grand Rapids Business • July 23, 2024
ChoiceOne Bank’s headquarters in Sparta. Credit: Joe Boomgaard, Crain’s Grand Rapids Business . A digital platform developed five years ago helped ChoiceOne Bank streamline and automate the commercial lending process. After processing $3.5 billion in commercial loans since 2019 through the Metriciti platform, the Sparta-based ChoiceOne Bank now wants to share it with peers. ChoiceOne Bank and DPT Solutions Inc., a Cascade Township company that provides process automation solutions to clients across a variety of industries, have been marketing the Metriciti software to other community banks to use for their commercial lending. “We’re trying to be a force for good in community banking and offer what we’ve developed over five years to other banks,” ChoiceOne Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Adom Greenland said. “We believe strongly that there is a market for this and that this will have a positive impact with other community banks.” ChoiceOne and DPT Solutions launched their partnership in March to license Metriciti to community banks. ChoiceOne Bank holds the intellectual property and DPT Solutions serves as the software’s reseller to other potential users for a turnkey solution for commercial lending.  DPT Solutions initially focused on Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, starting with a controlled early release and primarily targeting banks from $500 million to $10billion in assets. DPT Solutions now has “several deals in the opportunity stage of the pipeline,” CEO Dan McGraw said. One bank is “in the contract stages,” he said. Metriciti offers a “complete end-to-end solution for the commercial lending process” that includes sales management, an online application, data analytics, credit underwriting, managing client relationships and communications, documentation, and monitoring the loan and tracking the company’s performance afterward, said Josh Hucul, ChoiceOne Bank’s vice president of lending technology who designed the platform. “The efficient processes allow us and other banks to get funds in the hands of clients as efficiently and quickly as possible,” Hucul said. DPT Solutions first developed Metriciti in 2019 with ChoiceOne as the bank sought anew commercial lending software platform. The bank at the time “had a solution we weren’t happy with,” Greenland said. “We looked at the market and we weren’t happy with anything.” ChoiceOne employees knew staff at DPT Solutions, which had previously built some custom software for the bank, he said. The two companies then partnered to develop Metriciti, which ChoiceOne deployed effectively during the depths of the pandemic in 2020 to manage the “madness” and crush of applications for federal Paycheck Protection Program loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration, Greenland said. “We used this solution to help us with PPP, and that really kind of supercharged the software,” Greenland said. “We liked it so much and we’ve shown it to other banks on a friendly basis just to show them what we’ve done. We’ve had a lot of inquiries about, ‘Hey, can I use that, too?’” A couple of banks also contacted DPT Solutions, and in explaining what they needed, “basically described exactly what we did for ChoiceOne,” McGraw said. DPT introduced executives at those banks to ChoiceOne and “they loved what they saw, so we started to go through a little bit of a market analysis phase with other banks and said, ‘We’d like to just show you this thing,’” he said. “All of the banks we showed it to were excited and said, ‘how do I buy that?’” McGraw said. “We kept hearing that and said, ‘there’s a product here, there’s a market here, let’s build this as a product that we can market.’” Ensuing conversations led to ChoiceOne’s decision to license the software platform to other banks to use with DPT Solutions handling the sales, implementation and support. DPT Solutions, which is a partner with Microsoft, can tailor components of the platform to “complement banks’ unique processes,” McGraw said. “They don’t have to fit into that perfect mold.” Recent survey data within the banking industry indicate that many banks are seeking to adopt a commercial lending platform. In trade publication Bank Director’s annual technology survey in 2023, more than one in five of responding CEOs, CFOs and senior executives said their bank had upgraded or implemented a digital business lending platform in the last 18 months. Another 37% planned to do the same within the coming 18 months, according to survey results that Bank Director released last September. In a fall 2023 survey of community banks by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, nearly half of respondents said that adopting new or emerging technologies to meet customer demands was “very important.” Another 10% ranked it as “extremely important.” That survey found that the lowest satisfaction rates were for banking technologies for core services and workflow processes. Based on his experience and conversations with other bankers, Hucul sees strong interest in the Metriciti commercial lending platform. “The appetite for different new technology is certainly there. There is a lot of demand in the environment, whether it’s banks that have manual processes today that really need to get to the next level, or if they have a different provider that it just doesn’t do everything that they want it to do,” he said. “The majority of folks we’re talking to are in that bucket as well, and we’ve seen incredible demand since our launch.”
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