Accountants and Lenders Can Reduce Fraud and Improve Efficiency With Document Digitization Tools

Lenders Can Improve Efficiency By Digitizing Documents

In a Nutshell: Lenders review financial statements and loan applications to assess the creditworthiness of prospective borrowers. But evaluating applicants can be a time-consuming process. MoneyThumb helps businesses digitize financial documents and quickly analyze them. The company’s tools also prevent fraud, allowing businesses to pass on savings to customers.

Life is full of milestones — including graduating from college and purchasing your first home — that call for celebrations. But when you’re tossing your graduation cap into the air or standing on the front porch of your first home, you may not remember that your journey began with a rather mundane step — completing an application.

Anyone who’s applied for a job, an educational opportunity, or a loan knows that completing an application can be tedious work. For those preparing for a day of filling out applications, I recommend you brew a fresh pot of coffee to help you stay focused and energized.

If completing one application sounds like a chore to you, imagine being on the receiving end of hundreds or thousands of applications. Financial institutions must process applications efficiently to locate prime candidates for lending products and other services.

MoneyThumb provides solutions to help accountants and lending businesses digitize and analyze financial documents. The company’s tools save businesses time and increase their accuracy in reviewing financial files. We spoke with Ryan Campbell, MoneyThumb’s CEO, to learn more about the company’s innovative products.

MoneyThumb logo

MoneyThumb’s offerings have changed over time. The company initially provided services to help investors rebalance their portfolios. Campbell told us that one of the company’s customers, who was an accountant, suggested MoneyThumb use its digitization expertise to help businesses convert documents from one format to another.

“We wanted to build something that was completely automated so that it could just read everything on a file and convert it in a way that was the absolute peak of accuracy,” Campbell told us. “So we worked with a group of customers to accomplish that, and we saw an opportunity in 2018 to pursue solutions for businesses in the lending industry.”

MoneyThumb’s conversion tools help accountants load information into QuickBooks. On the lending side, MoneyThumb’s solutions produce outputs that help lenders assess a borrower’s creditworthiness and identify fraud. Campbell told us the company spent years developing and fine-tuning its solutions for lenders, but its efforts have allowed MoneyThumb to reach new customers.

MoneyThumb’s growth through the years caught the eye of investors, and a private equity firm purchased the company in early 2024. Campbell told us the sale provides MoneyThumb with capital that will allow it to expand to additional industry verticals.

“I would say that, in 2024, we’ve probably facilitated over $2 billion in transactions, and our accounting side is currently working with tens of thousands of clients,” Campbell told us. “Our workforce has doubled over the last year to support the increases in our business, and we’re hopeful that we can continue the same growth trajectory over the course of the next year.”

Solutions Serve Customers of All Sizes

When I was in school, I often heard classmates complain about the accounting classes they were enrolled in. They said the classes lacked excitement, but I’ve always thought that an accountant’s work is like the steps a detective on a case takes.

Instead of investigating crime scenes and interviewing eyewitnesses, accountants pore over credit card statements, bank records, and other financial documents to search for clues to help them complete assignments. Campbell told us MoneyThumb’s accounting solutions suit publicly traded companies as well as smaller operations with only one or two employees.

“Regardless of the size of the business they work for, accountants consistently need to extract data into whatever accounting software they’re using,” Campbell told us. “The old way of doing that was to send information overseas to have a company type in data and send it back to you, but you can imagine the security issues that a process like that creates. That method also takes multiple business days to complete, but we can turn things around practically instantly.”

Ryan Campbell
Ryan Campbell is MoneyThumb’s CEO.

MoneyThumb delivers lending solutions to revenue-based financial companies, including factoring companies and mortgage shops. Campbell told us that any lender that makes underwriting decisions based on the information on a bank statement or application is a candidate for the company’s services.

MoneyThumb’s solutions suit lenders of all sizes, and the company offers its products at affordable rates to benefit businesses that don’t have a substantial budget for document-conversion services. MoneyThumb doesn’t charge setup fees or require customers to commit to long-term contracts. Campbell told us some clients have worked with MoneyThumb for seven years without ever signing a contract.

“We really wanted to create something that allowed everybody to play in the same sandbox,” Campbell told us. “I’ll get to the end of some of the agreements of companies who are looking to sell us software and realize they’re trying to get us to sign a three-year contract. We just never wanted that because we want to deliver a quality product that people stay with because they love it, not because they’re on a contract.”

Helping Businesses Work Faster and Smarter

The internet simplifies comparison shopping by allowing shoppers to assess products from the comfort of their living rooms. But when numerous companies offer similar products, comparison shopping can still be a tough task. 

MoneyThumb differentiates itself from its competitors by offering an affordable suite of products that help companies work faster and more accurately. The company values customer feedback and uses it to improve its offerings. When a lending client suggests an improvement to a product, MoneyThumb will develop the enhancement for free, Campbell told us.

MoneyThumb’s customer service team helps answer client questions, and it also takes note of their experiences with the company’s products to learn how to better serve them.

“We’re always talking about growing and evolving, and product enhancements help us get there,” Campbell told us. “When a customer reaches out to somebody in our customer service group, they’re reaching someone who knows the software really well and is excited to answer their questions and follow through until their ticket is resolved.”

MoneyThumb interface
MoneyThumb’s solutions allow businesses to review documents efficiently.

MoneyThumb’s digitization tools capture a wide array of information from documents. The company analyzes bank statements in a detailed manner to ensure it satisfies the requirements of its diverse customers. 

Businesses who employ MoneyThumb’s solutions can save a significant amount of time on document review. 

Campbell told us about a customer operating in the funding arena who has been in business for five years. Prior to engaging with MoneyThumb, the customer’s underwriters were capable of working on five to seven files per day. Since implementing MoneyThumb’s solutions, the underwriters can work on more than 50 files per day.

“As you can imagine, that company had started out relatively small, but they’re now one of the larger players in the industry,” Campbell told us. “I wouldn’t say that their growth is all because of us — they are expert business operators — but our efficiency solution really assisted them along the way. In the past, companies could spend 20 to 30 minutes reviewing a bank statement for the data they needed, but, with us, it’s incredibly quick.”

Tools Allow Clients to Sidestep Fraud 

Any discussion about working with financial documents and transmitting banking information from one entity to another wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t touch on fraud. 

When MoneyThumb digitizes a bank statement, its Thumbprint product identifies whether the statement has been fraudulently manipulated. Campbell said the company’s fraud prevention services prevent losses for businesses and allow them to price deals more competitively.

“You can find bank statements on the internet and just change the names on them so it appears that they belong to someone else.” Campbell told us. “Websites help people do that, supposedly so they can impress their friends with big bank statements, but they’re really helping people create fraudulent documents they could take to a lender. Our hope is that by identifying fraud in a manner that is efficient and cost effective, we help funders serve their customers better.” 

MoneyThumb doesn’t charge development fees for its products. Instead, the company employs a consumption model that allows customers to purchase a bucket of conversions that they renew when their remaining conversions are running low. Campbell said that approach opens the door for smaller businesses to use the company’s products without incurring significant initial expenses.

With a fresh infusion of capital and product offerings that help businesses grow, the future is bright for MoneyThumb. Campbell told us the company plans to continue to expand on the document types it processes for businesses.

“We’re also going to work on other outputs for our lending and accounting customers that help them do their jobs with even more speed and accuracy, because that’s what they’re always looking for,” Campbell told us.