MANTL Application Comments is a new collaboration feature announced by MANTL (an Alkami solution) to help banks and credit unions accelerate application reviews while improving compliance oversight. With this feature, teams can insert time-stamped, immutable notes directly into an application on the MANTL platform creating a transparent, auditable record of all actions, decisions, and handoffs.
MANTL, now operating as part of Alkami, has unveiled a major enhancement to its account origination and application review ecosystem with the launch of MANTL Application Comments. This new feature is designed to help banks and credit unions work more efficiently, collaborate more transparently, and maintain stronger compliance oversight throughout the account and loan origination process. By embedding secure, time-stamped, and immutable comments directly into the MANTL application workflow, the feature centralizes communication and provides a complete historical record of every step taken during a review.
As financial institutions continue to evolve toward digital-first operations, the need for both operational efficiency and robust compliance has become increasingly critical. Application Comments aims to bridge the gap between these two priorities by delivering seamless collaboration capabilities while supporting the rigorous auditability expected in regulated environments.
Rethinking Application Review in Banks and Credit Unions
In many institutions, reviewing customer applications still involves a patchwork of communication tools—emails, phone calls, shared spreadsheets, internal messaging platforms, and sometimes even handwritten notes. These fragmented channels not only slow down decision-making but also create compliance risks, since important discussions can be lost, misplaced, or untraceable during audits.
MANTL designed Application Comments to solve this problem by centralizing all communication inside the application itself. Every team member who touches an application—branch staff, call-center representatives, digital operations teams, fraud analysts, underwriting specialists, and compliance officers—can collaborate inside a single, unified interface without switching tools or tracking down missing context.
This marks a major shift for institutions that still rely on legacy processes: instead of following digital communication trails across multiple systems, teams can trace every comment and action in one place, creating a smoother, more transparent review lifecycle.
A More Connected Review Process: Enhancing Collaboration and Visibility
The heart of Application Comments lies in improving collaboration during the manual review workflow. While MANTL’s platform already automates the majority of originations, a small but critically important percentage of applications still require human intervention. These are often higher risk, more complex, or require additional verification.
Historically, such reviews involved back-and-forth communication across different channels, leading to:
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Lost context when applications change hands
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Delays caused by unclear instructions
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Mismatched interpretations of customer data
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Lack of transparency into why decisions were made
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Slow escalation to supervisors or compliance teams
With Application Comments, all commentary, clarifications, questions, and decisions are placed directly alongside the application data. This ensures that anyone reviewing the file can instantly understand the reasoning behind prior decisions, reducing friction and improving clarity.
Because each comment is time-stamped and permanently preserved, team members gain full visibility—not only into what decision was made, but also why, when, and by whom. This helps streamline multi-team workflows and supports more consistent, accurate decision-making.
Immutable, Time-Stamped Audit Trails for Stronger Compliance
Compliance is a critical function in banks and credit unions, and every decision made during the account opening or loan application process must be defensible, traceable, and compliant with regulatory expectations. Traditional, email-based communication creates significant audit challenges: conversations may be lost, deleted, or stored in systems not accessible to auditors.
MANTL’s Application Comments solves this by creating a built-in, immutable audit trail. Every comment:
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Is time-stamped
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Cannot be altered or deleted
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Is linked to the user who posted it
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Is tied to a specific stage or action within the application workflow
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Becomes part of the permanent application record
For compliance teams, this level of documentation is invaluable. It provides a complete narrative of the decision-making journey, making it easier to:
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Prepare for regulatory audits
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Investigate internal reviews
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Enhance fraud detection processes
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Validate that employees followed procedures
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Demonstrate adherence to policies
Regulators increasingly expect financial institutions to maintain data integrity, ensure transparency, and retain documentation for long periods. Application Comments strengthens an institution’s compliance posture by delivering a secure, organized, and easily retrievable record of review activity.
Operational Efficiency: Reducing Delays and Increasing Throughput
MANTL reports that about 85% of applications submitted through its platform are fully automated, requiring no manual review. For the remaining applications—which often hold greater risk implications or require additional verification—speed and precision are crucial.
Application Comments significantly improves operational efficiency by:
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Eliminating email chains and scattered communication
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Reducing time spent searching for context
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Shortening time-to-decision
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Cutting down on unnecessary back-and-forth
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Ensuring smooth handoffs between teams
When an underwriting team receives an escalated application, they no longer need to reach out to branch staff or digital support to ask what actions have already taken place. The entire history—verification steps, insights, flags, and questions—is already recorded. This means quicker evaluation and fewer repeated tasks.
In a high-volume review environment, even small efficiencies compound into substantial time savings, enabling employees to prioritize more valuable work such as customer engagement, fraud prevention, and relationship building.
Customer Feedback: Early Validation from Industry Leaders
The introduction of Application Comments is already receiving strong feedback from early adopters. Felipe Veloso, Senior VP & Director of Digital Products at ConnectOne Bank, emphasized its transformative impact, noting that the feature enhances transparency, improves internal alignment, and ultimately elevates both the banker and customer experience.
This early validation from a digitally forward institution reinforces the market need MANTL identified: financial teams demand tools that support efficient collaboration without sacrificing compliance, control, or auditability.
Deeply Integrated With the Broader MANTL Origination Ecosystem
A major advantage of Application Comments is its seamless integration with the MANTL Origination Platform, which powers both deposit and loan application workflows. Rather than relying on external collaboration tools that sit outside core systems, comments are embedded directly into the same interface used for:
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Application intake
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Identity verification
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Fraud checks
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Document collection
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Know Your Customer (KYC) processes
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Underwriting decisions
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Final approvals
This means no switching screens, no managing multiple platforms, and no need for additional integrations. Everything happens in a unified ecosystem designed for regulated financial workflows.
Because the feature is native to MANTL, institutions benefit from:
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Lower onboarding friction
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Minimal implementation overhead
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Reduced dependence on legacy tools
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Consistent user experience across all review steps
Why Application Comments Is a Game-Changer for Financial Institutions
Financial institutions face mounting pressure to improve operational efficiency while navigating intense regulatory scrutiny. Application Comments directly addresses these dual demands.
1. Faster Decision-Making
By embedding communication into the workflow, manual reviews can be completed more quickly—minimizing customer wait times and reducing abandonment.
2. Better Audit Readiness
Time-stamped, immutable comments create a defensible chain of decision-making that regulators expect.
3. Richer Context for Every User
Whether onboarding a new team member or escalating a case, all historical context is readily available.
4. Higher Employee Productivity
Less time searching for information means more time resolving applications or focusing on customer engagement.
Key Considerations for Implementing Application Comments
As with any workflow enhancement, successful adoption requires thoughtful planning. Institutions should consider:
Training & Change Management
Teams across branches, underwriting, fraud, and compliance should be trained on how and when to use comments effectively.
Governance Policies
Banks should establish guidelines regarding:
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Comment format
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Appropriate language
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Role-based permissions
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Internal review protocols
Workflow Alignment
Existing processes should be mapped to ensure Application Comments supports—not disrupts—current review structures.
Monitoring and KPIs
Institutions should measure the impact of comments by tracking:
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Review turnaround speed
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Audit ratings
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Escalation rates
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Staff productivity metrics
Looking Ahead: A Strengthened Foundation for Future Innovation
The launch of Application Comments reflects MANTL’s broader mission: modernizing how financial institutions open accounts, review applications, and maintain compliance. As digital transformation accelerates, the ability to manage manual review efficiently—and transparently—will increasingly differentiate high-performing institutions from their peers.
Looking forward, MANTL is expected to expand on this foundation with additional capabilities such as:
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Enhanced audit dashboards
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Automated decision analytics
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AI-driven review insights
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Deeper reporting tools
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Intelligent escalation routing
By continuing to merge automation with structured collaboration, MANTL is positioning itself as a leader in the evolution of digital origination.
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