The problem
Forward Funding Canada's underwriters were drowning in manual PDF reviews of merchant cash advance applications. Each file required transcribing bank-statement fields, checking SOP thresholds (deposits, NSF counts, chargebacks, negative days), and deciding whether to route forward. Low-value submissions consumed the same effort as fundable ones, and speed-to-lead suffered.
What we built
We replaced manual reviews with an AI pipeline that extracts bank statements to normalized JSON with ~95% field accuracy, applies deterministic knockout rules with confidence thresholds, and routes qualified files to a sub-60-second outreach sequence in Salesforce. Edge cases flow into a one-click manual queue with reason codes and audit trail. Underwriters keep final say on overrides and pricing.
Results
- ~405 underwriter hours saved annually, $20,250 direct labor savings
- PDF-to-JSON extraction at ~95% field accuracy on real channel volume
- Funded-deal rate lifted from ~10% to ~25% via sub-60-second outreach on qualified files
- Full audit trail: confidence scores, reason codes, override logs preserved per decision