How OnDeck's 93% Growth Optimism Data Reshapes MCA Underwriting Best Practices

Small Business Growth Optimism Is Flooding the MCA Pipeline

OnDeck's newly released survey data paints a striking picture: 93% of small businesses expect growth in 2026, and a full 76% are bypassing banks entirely when they need capital. For MCA lenders and brokers, this is both an enormous opportunity and an operational stress test. The question is no longer whether deal flow will increase. It already has. The question is whether your MCA underwriting best practices can absorb the volume without sacrificing accuracy, speed, or fraud detection.

When three out of four small business owners skip the bank and look to alternative funders, the inbound pipeline for MCA shops doesn't just grow incrementally. It compounds. Every percentage point of bank avoidance translates into thousands of merchants seeking revenue-based financing, and each one of those merchants needs their bank activity verified before a dollar moves. If your verification process still depends on scheduling live calls across time zones, walking applicants through their online banking portals line by line, and repeating the exercise for every deal, you are already behind.

This article breaks down what OnDeck's optimism data actually means for MCA operations, why the verification bottleneck is the single biggest constraint on deal velocity, and how forward-thinking funders are restructuring their workflows to close more deals with fewer people.

Why 76% Bypassing Banks Changes the MCA Playbook

Volume Pressure on Underwriting Teams

The shift away from traditional bank lending isn't new, but the scale in 2026 is. When OnDeck reports that 76% of surveyed small firms are looking outside the banking system, that cohort is landing in the laps of MCA funders, revenue-based lenders, and equipment finance shops. For underwriting teams already stretched thin, the math simply doesn't work. A typical MCA underwriter can handle a finite number of live verification calls per day, usually somewhere between six and ten. When inbound applications double, you either hire proportionally or you find a way to decouple verification from real-time human presence.

As we explored in our analysis of how 76% of small firms bypassing banks reshapes MCA underwriting, the downstream effects are substantial. Longer queues lead to stale deals. Merchants who wait 48 hours for a verification call start shopping their application to competing funders. The speed-to-fund metric, arguably the single most important competitive differentiator in MCA, degrades precisely when demand is highest.

The Verification Bottleneck Exposed

Bank verification is the chokepoint. Not credit checks, not contract generation, not ACH setup. Those steps are largely automated at this point. What remains stubbornly manual for most MCA operations is the process of confirming that the bank activity a merchant claims is real. That means getting the merchant on a call, having them log into their banking portal, navigating to the right accounts and date ranges, and watching them scroll through transactions while an underwriter takes notes.

This process is fragile. It breaks when the merchant is in a different time zone, when they're running their business during banking hours, when they don't have their login credentials handy, or when the underwriter's calendar is full. Every one of those friction points is a place where a deal stalls or dies.

Asynchronous verification eliminates every single one of those failure modes. With a platform like Exact Balance, the underwriter creates a verification request, the merchant receives a secure link, and they record their banking portal at their convenience using nothing but their browser. No software install. No scheduled call. No time zone coordination. The underwriter reviews the recording when they're ready, verifies the transactions, and moves the deal forward.

AI-Guided Recording and Fraud Signal Detection

Volume without controls is a recipe for losses. As application counts rise, so does the surface area for fraud. Manipulated bank statements, synthetic identity applications, and stacking schemes all become more likely when funders are under pressure to close quickly. The solution isn't to slow down. It's to build smarter verification into the workflow itself.

AI-guided recording, the approach Exact Balance uses, places a floating coach on the applicant's screen during the recording session. This coach walks the merchant through each required step: logging in, navigating to the correct account, selecting the right date range, scrolling through transactions. The AI validates completion of each step in real time, ensuring the recording captures everything the underwriter needs before the session ends. There's no need for a follow-up call because the merchant got it wrong the first time.

Beyond guiding the recording, AI vision models can flag anomalies during review. Inconsistent formatting in transaction lists, browser developer tools left open, screen regions that appear digitally altered: these are signals that a human reviewer might miss when they're racing through their tenth verification of the day. Machine learning pattern detection doesn't get fatigued, and it doesn't skip steps under time pressure.

Restructuring MCA Verification Workflows for the Demand Surge

Designing an Async-First Pipeline

The funders who will capture the most value from the current demand surge are those who treat asynchronous verification as the default, not the exception. An async-first pipeline means that every new application triggers an automated verification request immediately upon intake. The merchant receives their secure recording link within minutes of submitting their application, often before the underwriter has even opened the file.

This front-loading of verification compresses the overall time-to-decision. While the merchant is recording their banking session, the underwriter can be reviewing a different deal's recording, pulling credit data, or preparing contracts. Parallel processing replaces sequential bottlenecking. The result is more deals closed per underwriter per day without any increase in headcount.

Audit Trail and Compliance Readiness

Growth optimism among small businesses also attracts regulatory attention. When more capital flows through alternative channels, regulators pay closer attention to how that capital is underwritten. The CFPB's recent finalization of small business data collection rules may have excluded MCAs from Section 1071 reporting, but the broader regulatory trajectory is toward more transparency, not less. State-level disclosure requirements continue to expand, and institutional capital partners increasingly demand verifiable audit trails before deploying funds.

Every Exact Balance recording is timestamped and stored securely in encrypted cloud storage. The activity log tracks when the verification link was opened, when the recording started, when it was submitted, and when the underwriter reviewed it. This creates a complete compliance documentation chain that satisfies both internal risk teams and external auditors. As we detailed in our piece on how MCA audit season exposes bank verification documentation gaps, lenders without structured audit trails face material risk during compliance reviews.

Scaling Without Proportional Hiring

The traditional response to higher application volume is to hire more underwriters. That approach has obvious limitations: recruiting takes time, training takes longer, and labor costs scale linearly with volume. Async verification breaks this relationship. Because recordings can be reviewed at any time and in any order, a single underwriter's throughput increases significantly. Early adopters of async workflows report reviewing three to four times as many verifications per day compared to live call-based processes.

For mid-market MCA shops processing hundreds of deals per month, this efficiency gain is the difference between profitable growth and margin compression. The cost per verification drops, the speed-to-fund improves, and the quality of the verification actually increases because the AI coach ensures completeness before the recording is submitted.

What This Means for Funders, Brokers, and the Competitive Landscape

OnDeck's data reflects a structural shift, not a cyclical blip. Small businesses have learned, especially since the pandemic era, that alternative lenders move faster, require less paperwork, and say yes more often than traditional banks. That behavior is now deeply embedded. The 76% figure isn't going back to 50% next year.

For MCA funders, this means the addressable market is larger than ever, but the margin for operational inefficiency is thinner than ever. Merchants who encounter friction during the verification stage will route their application to a competitor. Brokers who can't get their merchants through verification quickly will lose deals to direct-to-merchant platforms. The competitive advantage belongs to the operation that can move from application to funded deal with the fewest manual touchpoints.

Consider the broker's perspective. A broker submits a deal to three funders simultaneously. The funder who sends the verification request first, gets the recording back fastest, and approves the deal within hours wins the merchant. The funder who schedules a live call for tomorrow afternoon finishes last. This dynamic, which we explored in depth in our analysis of how speed to lead depends on bank verification software for MCA brokers, is only intensifying as volume rises.

The institutional side matters too. As larger capital providers enter the MCA space, they bring expectations around process standardization, documentation, and auditability. A funder seeking a credit facility or securitization partner will be asked to demonstrate how they verify bank activity. "We call the merchant and watch them scroll" is not a satisfying answer to a due diligence team. Timestamped video recordings with AI-validated completion logs, stored in encrypted cloud infrastructure, is.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best practices for MCA underwriting when application volume surges?

The most effective approach is to decouple bank verification from real-time scheduling. Use asynchronous verification workflows that let applicants record their banking sessions on their own time while underwriters review recordings in batch. This eliminates calendar bottlenecks and allows parallel processing. Combine async workflows with AI-guided recording to ensure completeness and flag potential fraud signals automatically. Maintain structured audit trails for every verification to satisfy compliance requirements and institutional due diligence.

How does async bank verification improve speed to fund for MCA lenders?

Async bank verification removes the single biggest delay in the MCA funding process: scheduling a live call with the merchant. Instead of waiting hours or days to coordinate calendars, the merchant receives a secure recording link immediately and completes the verification whenever it's convenient. The underwriter reviews the recording on demand, often within minutes. This compresses the verification step from a multi-day process to a same-day or even same-hour workflow, directly improving the speed-to-fund metric that determines competitive positioning.

Can AI detect fraud during bank verification recordings?

Yes. AI vision models can analyze screen recordings for indicators of manipulation, including inconsistent transaction formatting, visible browser developer tools, screen artifacts suggesting digital alteration, and navigation patterns that deviate from legitimate banking portals. AI-guided recording systems also ensure that the applicant completes all required steps, such as logging in live, navigating to specific accounts, and displaying correct date ranges, reducing the opportunity for pre-staged or fabricated content. These capabilities complement, rather than replace, human review.

Why are small businesses bypassing banks for MCA funding?

According to OnDeck's 2026 survey, 76% of small businesses now seek funding outside traditional banks. The primary drivers are speed, accessibility, and approval rates. Bank loan applications typically take weeks to process and require extensive documentation, collateral, and strong credit profiles. MCA funders can approve and fund within days, often with minimal paperwork beyond bank verification and proof of revenue. For small business owners focused on growth, the time value of fast capital outweighs the higher cost of MCA financing.

Conclusion

The combination of record-high growth optimism and widespread bank avoidance among small businesses is creating a demand wave that will reward MCA funders with scalable, efficient verification workflows and punish those still relying on manual, synchronous processes. The bottleneck is clear: bank verification. The solution is equally clear: move to an async-first model with AI-guided recording, structured audit trails, and on-demand review.

Exact Balance was built specifically for this moment. If your team is spending hours scheduling verification calls, losing deals to slower turnaround, or struggling to document your process for compliance reviews, visit exactbalance.ca to see how asynchronous bank verification fits into your workflow. The demand is here. The question is whether your operations can keep up.