Windmill Microlending speeds up loan processing by 90%
Before implementing Freshsales, it took the lender a full month to get back to immigrant applicants. Now, it takes just three days.
"Freshsales is simple, easy to use, and easy to set up."
Business challenge
A manual process of spreadsheets, paper, and sticky notes slowed loan processing
Loan processors struggled to keep up with a growing number of applications
Business outcome
A modern CRM that provided a 360-degree view of each applicant, automated follow-ups, managed workflows, and tracked applications more efficiently
Freshworks solutions are built on Freshworks Neo Platform, powered by AWS, providing a strong and scalable foundation for end-to-end cloud operations
Windmill Microlending is a Canadian nonprofit organization that offers low-interest microloans of up to $15,000 to skilled immigrants and refugees.
Financial services
North America
For many skilled immigrants and refugees in Canada, Windmill Microlending offers a lifeline—a loan to help them rebuild careers and lives. But a lengthy and manual loan application process left applicants waiting anxiously for weeks.
Windmill’s review team waded through physical files, spreadsheets, and sticky notes to consider applicants’ requests for educational and career-related loans. All the while, applications surged thanks to the nonprofit's successful outreach efforts. A modern CRM was needed to accelerate the loan review process and better support applicants. After finding Salesforce too complex for its largely non-technical team, Windmill turned to Freshsales from Freshworks, which already provided a solution for managing their internal IT support tickets: Freshdesk.
Freshsales CRM offered a 360-degree view of each applicant with all necessary information consolidated in one place. Freshsales gives Windmill a way to automate follow-ups, manage workflows, and track applications more efficiently. With Freshsales, loan processing time has dropped from 30 days to just three—a staggering 90% improvement. Freshsales not only speeds up the approval of essential loans but also allows Windmill to deliver timely support to those who need it most, helping immigrants turn their dreams into reality.
The company
Founded in 2005, Windmill Microlending is a Canadian nonprofit organization that offers low-interest microloans of up to $15,000 to skilled immigrants and refugees. These loans help newcomers to Canada pay for the costs of education and training programs, credentials, licensing, and more to reach their career goals.
The challenge
As more skilled immigrants to Canada learned about Windmill’s microloan program, loan applications surged. But the application review process—which relied on physical files, spreadsheets, and sticky notes—struggled to keep up with the growing demand. This outdated system created significant delays, with applications taking 30 days or more to process.
A manual intake process scattered across different tools made it challenging for Windmill’s team to track where each application stood, leading to missed follow-ups and inefficient handling of applicant data. This slowed the loan approval process and risked undermining the organization’s ability to support more newcomers as demand continued to grow.
When Jon Lam, Windmill’s former director of finance and risk, joined the organization in 2017, he quickly identified the need for a centralized CRM system to make the loan management process more efficient. It needed to enable the team to handle applications and follow-up, understand what applicants needed, and ultimately award loans to qualified candidates. For a team that wasn’t highly technical, the solution needed to be user-friendly and intuitive.
The solution
Windmill’s loan processing group evaluated Freshsales CRM after seeing their IT colleagues’ success using Freshdesk to manage internal support tickets. Lam and his team found Freshsales straightforward and user-friendly, even for those with limited technical skills. “Freshsales is simple, easy to use, and easy to set up,” says Lam.
Freshsales, built on Neo Platform and powered by AWS, provides a centralized platform for managing the loan application process with an intuitive portal that consolidates all applicant information into a single view. This eliminated the need to jump between physical files and spreadsheets, speeding up the loan review and approval process.
The CRM’s pipeline management capabilities offer clear visibility into each application's status, helping Windmill track progress and manage the flow of applications. Lam can now see the number of open applications, their status, and expected loan values, which helps in forecasting and managing the intake process more effectively.
Sales sequences automate follow-ups with applicants, a crucial feature given the increasing volume of applications. This automation saves time and ensures consistent communication, helping move applications through the pipeline faster. Windmill has also used Freshsales’ workflow automations for routine tasks such as updating an application’s status as it progresses through different stages.
Impact
With Freshsales, Windmill has cut its loan application processing time from an average of 30 days to just three days. By providing a user-friendly interface, centralized applicant information, and powerful automation tools, Freshsales has enabled Windmill to handle increasing application volumes with greater ease and accuracy.
The result is a faster, more transparent application process that better supports the nonprofit’s mission of helping skilled immigrants and refugees achieve their career goals. With Freshsales, Windmill can provide faster access to critical funding and reduce the uncertainty and wait times applicants previously faced.
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