The abundance of paperwork that accompanies consumer lending is well known and disliked all around. It can be inefficient too, requiring ink-on-paper signatures that slow things down.
Lena McCloskey, SVP and head of banking quality and productivity at First Horizon, knew that embedding DocuSign into lending operations would cut the length of the process to onboard and book a loan at the Memphis bank. Loans are now processed in two to three days, down from 10 to 13. Another seemingly-mundane task—organizing the file structure for the many documents generated in a loan application—has had a recent AI upgrade. It's been a game changer at the bank, McCloskey said.
"On average, it saves about two to three minutes per document. So, it's saved hundreds of hours just within three months of use," she said in an interview. "That means we're giving our teams back the time that they can spend on the value-add activities, on relationship building [and] relationship deepening."
First Horizon held $84 billion in customer assets as of the first quarter this year and earned 11.3% in annual return on equity in 2025. That grew to 12.3% in the first quarter, the bank said. First Horizon shares have risen 9.6% in the past year. In September, Morgan Stanley
First Horizon recently upgraded its customer relationship management system over a multi-year process, led by the bank's marketing department. McCloskey co-designed the system and represented the business side in the upgrade. She said it's hard to equate the CRM change with a boost to revenue. The effect it had on aligning all different parts of the bank with a unified customer-relationship view, though, is where she's seen results. Commercial loan commitments are up 50% year on year, she said.
"That is evidenced in enhanced earnings that we've been showing in our earnings releases and PPNR, the pre-provision net revenue growth," McCloskey said.
About 1,500 retail and small-business users login to the CRM every day, according to the bank. McCloskey also helped about 350 associates get up to speed with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to "speed decision-maker identification," First Horizon said.
McCloskey's goal is to always eliminate unnecessary steps in financial transactions to give its bankers more one-on-one time with clients.
"We value relationship banking, and what we want to ensure our bankers are enabled with is they know how to drive the value beyond just a product to service consulting," she said. "We want to be the trusted advisor that a client calls. We want to be at the table when they make their next big business decision."
