PPP Loan Processing Platform Delivered Under Pandemic Deadlines

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Cumberland River Financial Group needed a loan processing system for the Paycheck Protection Program so it could serve small and medium-sized businesses applying for relief. The SBA program opened on a compressed timeline, and application volume arrived faster than any manual process could absorb. Every application carried personally identifiable information and financial records that had to be stored, transmitted, and submitted to the SBA securely. The bank had no existing platform for this workflow and needed a partner who could deliver a secure system quickly without cutting corners on data protection.

The bank chose BeyondScale as a security-focused technology partner for the PPP loan application. We built the backend on AWS Workspaces with a modular Django API layer and a PostgreSQL database, with data encryption applied across the stack. Applicant documents were uploaded to secure AWS S3 storage, PII was anonymized during processing, and role-based access control restricted what bank staff could see and act on at each stage of the pipeline.

The React front end gave applicants and loan officers a single interface for intake, review, and submission. DocuSign integration handled applicant signatures, the SBA API integration submitted completed applications directly to the government, SmartyStreets validated business addresses at entry, and Intercom provided in-app applicant support. The architecture was designed for future scalability so the same platform could absorb later rounds of the program without a rebuild.