SaaS or on-premises solution for loan management – choosing the right fit for your lending company

If you’ve decided to use a loan management system (LMS) to automate your company’s lending processes, then you’re already on the right track to scaling your business and developing new products and markets. Not there yet? Then first read our guide, which includes the top 10 reasons every lending company should use an LMS.

Once your company is set on automation, the difficult task of determining which software solution best fits your business needs begins. According to Allied Market Research, in 2019 around 61% of loan documents were already digitally generated, so the industry is already huge and continues to expand.

“The most important decision you have to make when choosing an LMS is whether your company needs a “software as a service” (SaaS) or on-premises solution. While both will get the job done, it’s important to understand the benefits and weaknesses of each option, so that you’re prepared for what you’re going to get in terms of implementation, maintenance and cost,” says InGain CTO Kristaps Veinbergs.

Implementation

Software innovations mean that there are even no-code SaaS solutions on the market, which can eliminate the need for an in-house IT team and let your business get back to your core competencies. Most SaaS systems already support a wide range of lending products (such as payday loans, instalment loans, credit line calculation methods), and already include specific industry features, such as collateral management.

LMS implementation is a key process in terms of your company’s data security. Deciding to go with an on-premises solution ensures more control, however it also requires more resources. While SaaS solutions offer off-the-shelf systems, in many cases an on-premises solution requires additional resources from either an in-house or external IT team to customise and deploy the software and implement individually tailored products.

Maintenance

As previously mentioned, your company should spend the most amount of time possible focusing on your core product or service, not wasting valuable time maintaining LMS software. The main differences between maintaining a SaaS versus an on-premises solution are speed, labour and control.

With an on-premises solution, UX development and functionalities are only updated as fast as your in-house IT team can work on them, but it also gives you full control over the direction of updates. Whereas a SaaS solution has a whole company behind it working on consistently launching new innovations and updates. There are, however, also SaaS solutions that adjust to their client’s needs when it comes to feature development.

No matter how good your company’s IT department is, a huge SaaS advantage is that software companies can implement best practices and market experience of all existing clients in any new system updates. An on-premises solution only receives updates deployed by your team, as it requires custom development. SaaS technology stacks are renewed constantly, but if you find a customisable solution, you can opt in and out of these updates to best suit your needs.

Not only is a SaaS system faster with updates, catching and fixing bugs in the software also is much quicker and doesn’t require additional IT support on the client’s side. While on-premises systems are only used by one specific company, a SaaS solution will implement automated QA testing and catch out bugs based on feedback from a much broader scope of customers. The time it takes to identify and fix bugs in an on-premises solution can become too large of a burden if a company is trying to scale their business.

Cost

Most SaaS systems can be used on subscription terms. An off-the-shelf SaaS solution will definitely be cheaper to implement, as on-premises solutions require time and labour-intensive deployment. However if your company doesn’t feel that updates are necessary for business development and growth, you may want to consider an on-premises system. After the initial implementation cost it will end up being cheaper if your IT team is only focused on maintaining the current version.

On the other hand, if your company wants to innovate and grow while sharing research and development costs, then a SaaS system will be cheaper compared to on-premises internal customisation and updates. In this way the cost of keeping SaaS software updated is shared among all of the owner company’s clients, instead of each client spending money on in-house IT departments. And freeing up funds to spend on scaling your company is never a bad business plan!

————————————

InGain has been supporting business for over 10 years by providing an out-of-the box, yet fully customisable loan management system. On top of our core system, we deliver integration services for custom feature development and system connections. With hundreds projects under our belt and more that 50 clients around the world, InGain has the industry expertise to take your company to the next level.

Whether your business requires our full system or just individual modules – our products are specifically created for instalment loans, auto leasing, mortgages, line of credit, buy-now-pay-later, payday loans, invoice factoring and more – we’re confident that we have the solution that’s right for you!