Partner Onboarding Guide — Smartflow
This guide is for Smartflow partners who will be introducing Smartflow to bank prospects. Read this before any client conversation. It covers what Smartflow does, who buys it, how to position it, and what not to say.
1. What Smartflow Does (Plain English)
Smartflow is an AI-powered platform that automates the most labour-intensive parts of commercial loan operations at APAC banks.
Here is what that means in practice:
For a loan operations team, Smartflow reads a 500-page credit agreement — the kind that arrives as a PDF in an email inbox — and extracts over 200 structured data fields in under 5 minutes. Borrower details, facility terms, pricing mechanics, party information, conditions precedent. Everything that an operations officer would otherwise spend 8–20 hours extracting by hand. The extracted output is reviewed by the officer via a structured summary, verified field by field, and pushed directly into the bank's core system (typically Finastra LoanIQ).
For a risk or compliance team, Smartflow identifies covenant clauses, extracts thresholds and testing logic, tracks compliance ratios, and surfaces predicted covenant breaches 30–90 days before they occur — replacing reactive spreadsheet monitoring with proactive intelligence.
For the bank's IT and security team, Smartflow is deployed entirely inside the bank's own environment. Loan documents never leave the bank's infrastructure. There is no shared SaaS platform. No cross-bank data. No external processing.
That is the whole product, in plain English. It is not a generic AI tool. It was built specifically for the legal and financial complexity of APLMA and LMA syndicated loan agreements.
2. Who Buys It
Different people in a bank feel different versions of the same problem. Know which one you are talking to.
Loan Operations Team Lead
- Primary pain: Manual data extraction is consuming the entire team's capacity. Rework from errors is constant. Onboarding timelines are measured in weeks.
- What they want: Automation that is accurate enough to trust and fast enough to matter.
- How Smartflow solves it: 200+ fields extracted in under 5 minutes, 95%+ accuracy post-HITL review, direct LoanIQ push.
- Champion signal: They want to run a pilot immediately and show results to their manager.
Risk and Compliance Officer
- Primary pain: Covenant breaches are discovered weeks after the detection window opens. Regulatory reporting is manual and slow.
- What they want: Early warning, audit-defensible evidence, faster reporting cycles.
- How Smartflow solves it: Covenant monitoring with 30–90 day breach prediction, evidence-linked calculations, automated reporting outputs aligned with MAS/HKMA/APRA.
- Champion signal: They ask detailed questions about how Smartflow handles regulatory evidence and audit trails.
CTO / CISO
- Primary concern: Bank data cannot leave the environment. AI tools on shared cloud infrastructure are not acceptable.
- What they want: Proof that data sovereignty is guaranteed, not just claimed.
- How Smartflow solves it: Edge deployment within the bank's own infrastructure. Single-tenant isolation. No external data transmission. ISO 27001 aligned.
- Champion signal: They ask for technical architecture documentation and security review materials.
CFO / COO
- Primary motivation: Efficiency and cost reduction. Manual process is expensive at scale. FTE headcount grows linearly with loan volume.
- What they want: Quantified ROI, clear payback period, measurable outcomes.
- How Smartflow solves it: 65–80% reduction in manual processing time, 2-week onboarding compressed to 2 hours, FTE capacity freed for higher-value work.
- Champion signal: They ask about ROI modelling and want to take numbers to a board or executive committee.
3. How to Position Smartflow in a First Meeting
Use this talk track to open the value conversation. Adapt to what you know about the prospect before the meeting.
Opening frame:
"Your team spends [X] hours per loan on manual extraction and data entry. That's not a small number — across [Y] loans per month, that's the equivalent of [Z] full-time people whose entire job is reading documents and re-entering the same data into a system. Smartflow automates that to under 5 minutes per loan. Every field traces back to the source clause in the original agreement. And your data never leaves your environment — ever."
Then ask:
"Would it be useful to walk through what that looks like with one of your own documents?"
Why this works:
- It leads with their problem, not your product.
- It quantifies the impact using their own numbers.
- It addresses the sovereignty concern before it becomes an objection.
- It closes with a concrete next step (live extraction session).
4. What NOT to Promise
This is critical. Overpromising destroys trust and creates legal exposure. Do not do any of the following:
| Do not say | Why |
|---|---|
| "Smartflow achieves [specific number above 95%] accuracy" | Accuracy ranges are 90%+ automated, 95%+ post-HITL. Never promise beyond these ranges. |
| "The [Q2/Q3 2026 feature] is available now" | Roadmap items are planned, not committed. Always state the target quarter and that it is planned. |
| "We can build [custom feature] for you" | Custom features require explicit agreement with the Smartflow product team. Never commit to custom builds. |
| "Pricing is approximately [any number]" | All pricing is set by the Smartflow commercial team. Defer all pricing conversations to them. |
| "Smartflow integrates with [system not explicitly listed]" | Only confirm LoanIQ integration as native. Other integrations require confirmation from Smartflow. |
| "Your deployment will be live in [specific timeframe]" | Deployment timelines depend on the bank's environment. Only confirm the standard 8–12 week pilot structure. |
When in doubt, say: "That's a great question — let me confirm with the Smartflow team and come back to you."
5. Demo Resources
Demo scripts and synthetic assets are available in the partner portal:
- Core overview demo script:
../demo-scripts/exec-overview-15min.md— 20-minute walkthrough covering upload → extract → review → export. - Loan onboarding demo: Focused on extraction speed and accuracy. Best for ops team audiences.
- Covenant monitoring demo: Focused on breach prediction. Best for risk and compliance audiences. (Q3 2026 capability — demo with roadmap positioning)
- Data sovereignty walkthrough: Architecture explanation for CTO/CISO conversations.
Always do a dry run before a prospect demo. Never demo live on an untested document.
6. How to Register a Deal
Once you have a qualified prospect (bank name, contact, estimated deal size, and a scoping conversation planned), register the deal to protect your relationship and unlock Smartflow commercial support.
Process:
- Submit deal registration via email to partnerships@marketnode.com with: bank name, primary contact name and role, estimated deal size (range), target close timeline.
- Smartflow will confirm registration within 48 hours on business days.
- Once confirmed, you are the registered partner for that prospect. Smartflow will not engage the prospect independently.
- If Smartflow receives an inbound enquiry from the same prospect, they will redirect to you.
Deal protection is only valid after confirmed registration. Do not assume protection before you receive written confirmation.
See deal-registration-process.md for the full step-by-step process.
7. Partner Contacts
| Role | Contact | When to contact |
|---|---|---|
| Sales lead | partnerships@marketnode.com | Deal registration, commercial questions, escalation |
| Product lead | product@marketnode.com | Technical questions, roadmap enquiries, capability confirmation |
| Support | support@marketnode.com | Post-deployment issues, client support escalation |
| Marketing | marketing@marketnode.com | Co-branding approval, collateral requests |
Response SLAs: 48 hours for commercial, 24 hours for support escalations.
This guide is confidential and for use by certified Smartflow partners only. For certification requirements, see certification/training-curriculum.md.