Special thanks to Shawn Main, Chief Business Architect at Vantage Bank, for his vision and trust in partnering with both Cavallo Technologies and Databricks as strategic allies in this AI transformation journey.
Manual Processes Slowing Down Lending
For Vantage Bank, preparing loan applications was a labor-intensive, error-prone process. Lenders and lending assistants had to manually review policy documentation and coding manuals to ensure compliance with organizational requirements. Even minor errors in loan limits, exceptions, or coding could lead to downstream complications, increased workload for other teams, and slower approval times.
“Processing loan requests efficiently is critical to offering our customers tailored products,” says Shawn Main, Chief Business Architect at Vantage Bank.
The bank needed a way to streamline these processes, reduce errors, and give lenders more time to focus on customer needs.
Building Intelligence Into Lending Workflows
Vantage Bank partnered with Cavallo Technologies to create an AI-powered lending assistant built entirely on the Databricks platform. The solution was designed to answer complex lending questions, provide reliable source references, and capture user feedback – all while maintaining the security and scalability standards required in financial services.
What Made This Implementation Special?
Unprecedented Speed to Value: Using Databricks’ unified platform, Cavallo delivered a functional MVP on the first day of engagement. “Databricks allowed us to deliver a product on Day 1,” explains Guillaume Colley, Director of AI and Analytics at Cavallo Technologies. “This enabled the Vantage team to start integrating the chatbot in their lending origination system as we were iterating on the AI engine and the UI.”
Accuracy You Can Trust: A custom LLM evaluator continuously assessed AI engine performance, ensuring the final chatbot achieved 94% accuracy on complex lending questions. This wasn’t just about getting answers – it was about getting the right answers, consistently.
Built for Real Users: The chatbot interface included document citations and response quality ratings, building the trust essential for user adoption. Lenders could verify information sources and provide feedback, creating a continuous improvement loop.
Smart Cost Management: Both the UI and AI engine scale to zero outside working hours, delivering significant cost savings while maintaining performance when needed.
Always Up-to-Date Knowledge: Automated workflows refresh the AI engine’s knowledge base whenever new or updated loan policy documents are detected, ensuring lenders always have access to current information.
Leadership Visibility: An AI/BI dashboard provides real-time metrics on usage, performance, and user feedback, giving leadership the insights needed for data-driven decisions.
Why Databricks Made the Difference
When Cavallo Technologies first evaluated platforms for Vantage Bank’s AI lending assistant, they faced a common dilemma in enterprise AI projects: choosing between speed and compliance. Traditional approaches would have required stitching together multiple tools – one for data processing, another for model development, a third for deployment, and yet another for monitoring. Each integration point would have added weeks to the timeline and created potential security vulnerabilities.
Databricks changed that equation entirely. The unified platform meant Cavallo’s team could ingest Vantage’s lending policy documents, train and evaluate multiple LLMs, and deploy the chatbot interface all within the same secure environment. This wasn’t just about convenience – it was about maintaining data lineage and security controls while moving at startup speed.
The platform’s built-in governance features proved especially critical for a financial services client like Vantage Bank. Rather than bolting on compliance controls after the fact, security and regulatory requirements were baked into every layer of the solution from day one. This gave Vantage’s risk and compliance teams confidence to support rapid iteration cycles that would have been impossible with a patchwork of tools.
“Having the data, AI, governance, and reporting capabilities in one place makes this possible,” adds Colley.
Transformative Business Results
The impact was immediate and measurable:
- 87% of lenders reported improved productivity, with consistent usage across thousands of loans annually
- 94% accuracy on complex lending questions, validated through systematic evaluation
- Technical teams praised the solution’s security, maintainability, and especially the AI/BI dashboard
- Product insights emerged from user questions, revealing opportunities to enhance the broader lending platform
“Thanks to Databricks, we were able to quickly build and deploy a high-quality lending AI that helps our team handle loans faster and more accurately,” says Main. “This has completely transformed their workflow and delivered immediate business value.“
Scaling AI Across Banking Operations
The lending AI assistant’s success at Vantage Bank established a proven formula for enterprise AI: speed through unified development, trust through transparency, and visibility through real-time insights. These three factors didn’t just solve loan processing, they created a blueprint for AI transformation.
Now Vantage Bank is applying this same approach across customer service, risk management, and regulatory compliance. The scalable architecture and governance framework that powered the lending assistant are enabling rapid deployment of new AI applications. What started as a solution to manual processes has become Vantage’s systematic approach to becoming an AI-first organization, delivering measurable business value while maintaining the trust and compliance standards essential in financial services.
Ready to transform your business processes with AI? Discover how Databricks’ unified platform can accelerate your AI initiatives from concept to production.
