Case Study: Opus Bank achieves rapid SMB growth and faster underwriting with Equifax BusinessConnect

Opus Bank - Customer Case Study

Opus Bank, a fast‑growing regional bank based in Irvine, Calif., set out to create a dedicated Small Business (SMB) Banking division but found traditional commercial underwriting slow, costly and poorly suited to smaller firms—sometimes taking as long as 60 days. Leadership wanted a collaborative partner that could provide specialized data and an executable plan to scale SMB lending while preserving the bank’s relationship-driven approach.

Opus partnered with Equifax and implemented the cloud-based BusinessConnect platform with integrated small-business financial data and predictive scores to automate decisioning and keep ownership of customer data. Within a year the bank reduced SMB underwriting from about 45 days to 2–4 days, rolled SMB services out to all 60 branches, increased loan approval rates from roughly 25% to over 40%, and positioned itself to significantly grow SMB volume.

OpusBank

Miguel Serricchio

President