The Story at a Glance
The Challenge
Parker's manual underwriting process created a growth bottleneck, with over 15% of customers remaining unprocessed after 120 days and every policy change requiring extensive engineering resources.
The Outcome
Oscilar automated Parker's underwriting operations, reducing their backlog by 70% and processing times by 30-40% while eliminating engineering dependencies for risk decisions.
The Oscilar Impact
The Full Story
The Challenge
An Engineering Bottleneck
Parker had a mandate from their executive team: grow the business without linearly scaling the underwriting team. For a fintech offering corporate cards with 90-day credit terms to e-commerce businesses, this seemed impossible.
Their underwriting process was entirely manual. Each application required underwriters to compute the same ratios by hand, make case-by-case decisions with little standardization, and wait for engineering resources to implement any policy changes. With over 15% of customers remaining unprocessed after 120 days, Parker's growth was hitting a wall.
"Unlike consumer lending companies, our starting point was very manual," explains Russell Fischer, Director of Credit Risk at Parker. "We needed to find a way to process more applications without proportionally increasing our underwriting staff."
The deeper challenge wasn't just manual work—it was dependency. Every new underwriting rule, every policy adjustment, every data integration required significant engineering time. Parker needed to integrate multiple data sources including credit bureaus and proprietary data, but their existing systems made this complex and time-consuming.
For a fast-moving fintech in the competitive corporate card space, this engineering bottleneck was more than inefficient—it was strategically limiting. They couldn't adapt quickly to market changes or test new risk strategies without extensive development cycles.
The Solution
Effective Automation
Oscilar's credit underwriting platform gave Parker what they needed most: independence from engineering for day-to-day risk decisions. The platform's customizable workflows allowed Parker's risk team to create and modify complex decision trees directly, while seamless integration with their existing admin tool (Retool) meant no disruption to current processes.
The transformation was immediate and measurable. Oscilar handled complex integrations like Dun & Bradstreet's XML interface, saving Parker's engineering team significant time and effort. More importantly, it enabled Parker to automate portions of their underwriting process while maintaining the flexibility to quickly implement new strategies.
As Fischer notes: "Oscilar is one of those softwares where it actually helps users do engineering tasks and scale their business. We're launching a sub-$2 million revenue segment where it's going to be completely automated. We're using Oscilar for that."
The Outcome
The Numbers Tell the Story
The results exceeded Parker's expectations:
But the real transformation was strategic. Parker could now launch new underwriting strategies without extensive engineering involvement, capture more decisions in their system for better risk analytics, and standardize decision-making across their entire underwriting team.
"Speaking for the underwriting team, they would tell you their workload is roughly 30% less," Fischer explains. "That's great because the underwriting team is getting more leverage. Plus, we'll have more decisions captured in our system, which will help with future risk analytics."
Looking Ahead: Scaling Without Limits
Today, Parker has allocated one team member to work full-time on underwriting automation using Oscilar. They're expanding into more aspects of their onboarding process and exploring KYB, KYC processes, and lien searches—all capabilities that would have required months of engineering work previously.
For Parker, Oscilar solved the fundamental scaling challenge every growing fintech faces: how to maintain operational excellence while rapidly expanding. The platform positioned them to adapt quickly to market changes and continue scaling efficiently in the competitive corporate card landscape.
"It's an investment both from your engineering and risk team, but it's worth it," Fischer concludes. "You can achieve unbelievable levels of automation or leverage on your more operational risk teams by using a decision engine. Using a platform like Oscilar can help you get a ton of leverage and have better risk performance, even in corporate lending."
"Speaking for the underwriting team, they would tell you their workload is roughly 30% less," Fischer explains. "That's great because the underwriting team is getting more leverage. Plus, we'll have more decisions captured in our system, which will help with future risk analytics."
