How Validis × Covecta support UK credit teams
Overview
Credit teams struggle with fragmented borrower data and manual processes that can take weeks. An SME requests a loan, the lender emails them for accounts, the email is ignored, the SME then emails their accountant, waits a week, incurs substantial professional fees, and finally returns the data to the lender – all before anyone can make a decision. This creates a costly data bottleneck that delays credit decisions and drives up expenses significantly for everyone involved.
The partnership between Validis and Covecta addresses this fundamental challenge by automatically acquiring standardized financial data from clients’ ERPs and accounting packages, then feeding it directly into agentic AI workflows.
Validis provides direct connections to accounting/ERP systems and returns standardized financials within minutes. Covecta provides agentic AI workflows that orchestrate tasks across the lending lifecycle. Together, these capabilities help commercial banks and non-bank lenders increase speed and consistency in underwriting, covenant monitoring and periodic reviews – without relying on manual spreadsheet work.
Why the data foundation matters
Lenders need reliable inputs before they can automate judgement-heavy steps. The traditional process creates a data bottleneck that delays decisions and increases costs. Beyond the time delay, credit and coverage teams spend weeks in back-and-forth communication:
- Getting the data from SMEs and their accountants
- Addressing errors and inconsistencies
- Asking for clarifications
- Standardizing financial metrics across different accounting systems
- Inputting it into downstream applications
Validis’ proposition is to deliver structured, standardized financials from a broad range of accounting platforms through open accounting API authorizations, reducing the friction of data gathering from weeks to minutes.
Where agentic AI fits
- Covecta’s platform focuses on financial-services workflows using agents that interact with enterprise data. The technical architecture works as follows:
- Covecta agents sit between the user and Validis
- Users can initiate tasks via natural language prompts or scheduled workflows
- Agents send API requests potentially via MCP server to Validis
- Data flows back from the SME’s accounting system via Validis
- Agents process the data for ratio calculations, covenant testing, trend analysis
- All information is stored in Covecta’s knowledge base for conversational querying
Three practical applications
Underwriting assistance: Auto-populate credit applications and draft credit memos from standardized ledgers for underwriter review, keeping analysts in the loop. Instead of waiting weeks for reconciled accounts, agents can initiate data requests, process returned financials, and populate templates – often within hours rather than weeks.
- Covenant monitoring: Use agents to compare borrower performance against covenants on a scheduled basis and route exceptions for resolution. Agents can automatically calculate ratios from component parts of balance sheets and P&L statements, flagging breaches or trends.
- Cross-sell identification: Parse borrower financial information to identify opportunities to increase share of client wallet through selling additional loan, hedging, and banking products. Agents can analyze cash flows, working capital needs, and business growth patterns to surface relevant opportunities.
- Ongoing portfolio reviews: Produce consistent, auditable packs on a schedule using agents plus standardized data as inputs. Once data is in the system, bankers can query it conversationally: “What’s the trend for the last three years?” or “Show me all borrowers approaching covenant thresholds.”
Security & assurance
Validis is ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant with Azure hosting – controls that are often prerequisites for UK lenders evaluating data vendors.
Covecta is ISO 27001 certified and hosted by AWS.
Next steps
Financial institutions can explore demonstrations showing Validis data flows into Covecta’s agents to support a target process (e.g., covenant checks, underwriting workflows).
Request a demo from Covecta: hello@covecta.io
