The macro shift in commercial lending is creating a new operational bar. Most lenders are trying to compete with infrastructure built for a different era.
The ground is shifting
Banks comprised only 18% of new commercial real estate loan originations in Q3 2024, down from 38% a year earlier. Private credit has filled the gap, growing from $141 billion in U.S. volume in 2013 to $853 billion in 2023. The global market now stands at $1.7 trillion and is expected to double by the end of the decade.
This is not a rate cycle story. Basel III capital requirements, the 2023 regional bank failures, and sustained regulatory pressure have structurally reduced banks' appetite for commercial credit. Private credit and debt funds have stepped in permanently.
The lenders winning deals today are winning on speed and execution, not rate. That changes what it means to be operationally competitive.
The old operating model was not built for this
Most commercial lenders are still running deals through email threads, shared drives, and spreadsheets. Loan origination workflows were designed for a slower, simpler market. Portfolio management systems cannot keep pace with the covenant complexity and annual review volume that modern commercial books demand.
The cost is real: slow credit decisions, missed deals, and compliance exposure that grows with every manually tracked exception. When a debt fund can close in three weeks and your process takes ten, the relationship is at risk regardless of your rate.
What winning lenders are doing differently
The lenders gaining ground share a few common traits. They have replaced email chains with collaborative deal rooms where borrowers, brokers, and credit teams work in one place. They use AI to process loan documents in hours, not days. They spread financials without a three-day analyst queue. And they have portfolio visibility that surfaces deteriorating credits before they become losses.
These are not incremental improvements. They are the difference between a lender that executes and one that watches deals go elsewhere.
This hits community banks and debt funds hardest
Community banks face a specific problem. Geography is no longer a moat. Fintechs and digital lenders captured 44% of new checking accounts by offering cash incentives up to $500. The same dynamic is playing out in commercial lending. A borrower who can get a faster answer from a debt fund or a regional non-bank lender will take it.
Debt funds face a different version of the same pressure. In private credit, your platform is your pitch. Institutional capital allocators evaluating managers want to see operational discipline, not just returns. Slow processes and manual reporting are a signal.
For both, regulatory pressure and rising funding costs mean operational drag is no longer affordable. McKinsey projects a $170 billion erosion of global banking profit pools if banks fail to modernize. The cushion that once allowed slow processes to persist is gone.
The case for purpose-built infrastructure
The incumbent platforms — nCino and Abrigo — were built for large banks with large implementation budgets. They are expensive, slow to deploy, and require significant customization before they reflect how a lender actually works. Generic CRMs are worse. They touch the workflow at the edges but were never designed for the complexity of commercial credit.
There is a meaningful difference between software that touches your workflow and software that is your workflow. The first kind adds steps. The second kind removes them.
Purpose-built means the data model, the collaboration layer, and the portfolio logic were all designed around commercial lending from the start — not adapted from something else.
Why CapitalMrkts
CapitalMrkts was built by people who have sat on the lender side. Before founding this company, we rebuilt commercial portfolio management systems from scratch at a bank, replacing spreadsheet-based annual reviews, covenant tracking, and financial spreading with automated workflows. We know what breaks and why.
The platform is built around the deal room: a single space where every document, every decision, and every stakeholder lives. Borrowers submit materials through it. Credit teams review inside it. AI processes and spreads financials within it. Portfolio managers track covenant compliance from it.
It is not a CRM with loan fields bolted on. It is not a legacy LOS with a new interface. It is infrastructure designed specifically for the way commercial lenders originate and manage credit today.
The window is now
The structural shift in commercial lending is still early. Private credit is growing, community banks are searching for a new edge, and the lenders investing in operational infrastructure now will be the ones with market share when conditions stabilize.
The lenders who build the right infrastructure now will own the market when the dust settles.
Joshua Tackaberry
Founder & CEO, CapitalMrkts