First Internet Bank cuts compliance review times by 87% with Bretton AI
Key results
- Time to value - 1 month
- Compliance review time for new customers - Reduced from 10 hours to under 1 hour
- Hours saved annually - 24,300
- Use cases - Enhanced Due Diligence, SBA Loan Origination, Fraud Reviews, Customer Due Diligence Reviews
The 10-hour bottleneck holding back growth
As the first branchless, fully internet-based bank in the United States, First Internet Bank of Indiana is a pioneer of online banking. With $6 Billion in assets, operating entirely from one office in Fishers, Indiana, the bank has built a reputation for efficiency and digital-first service.
But as the bank scaled its offerings across Small Business Administration (SBA) lending, fintech partnerships, and direct customer onboarding, manual compliance work was stunting the pace of growth.
“Before Bretton AI, our compliance processes were highly manual and inconsistent. It would take us anywhere from 8-10 hours to complete a review, sometimes even longer.”
— Anne Sharkey, Chief Risk Officer
The inefficient processes meant not only that First Internet Bank was unable to expand quickly, they were also unable to keep up with the volume of existing investigations. With reviews taking an entire working day, analysts could only handle a limited number of cases per week. Growing loan volumes meant growing backlogs, which came with a direct commercial cost. The bank couldn't scale its SBA business without either compromising turnaround times or adding headcount. It needed a solution that could handle high volumes of compliance cases while reducing manual workloads.
Enabling growth without compromise
First Internet Bank partnered with Bretton AI to modernize operations and eliminate bottlenecks. By implementing Bretton across the bank’s tech stack, First Internet Bank sought to automate its most time-intensive investigation workflows so it could grow without compromise. And the results were almost instantaneous.
Analysts saw immediate, tangible time savings with the launch of the first use case, which was up and running within only a week of go-live. To capture the full value of Bretton’s agents, the bank’s compliance team also spent the first 30 days refining workflows and embedding AI within them, as part of a structured calibration period. Finally, First Internet Bank had a foundation built to scale.
"Bretton AI has allowed us to scale our process and make it more efficient. It brings a lot of the information into one report where an analyst can really focus on the high-risk areas."
— Anne Sharkey, Chief Risk Officer
Focusing on the highest-impact work first
Rather than boiling the ocean, First Internet Bank deployed Bretton across the four highest-volume, highest-friction workflows in the compliance queue:
- Enhanced due diligence: Bretton cut research time from hours to minutes for complex customers requiring deeper investigation by Bretton automatically aggregating adverse media, corporate registry data, beneficial ownership structures, and risk signals into a single analyst-ready report.
- SBA loan origination: Bretton reduced manual review times by 87%, running diligence on incoming SBA applicants, surfacing fraud signals, sanctions hits, and business verification data before First Internet Bank’s analysts ever had to open a file. What previously took 8-10 hours of manual research now takes under an hour.
- Fraud reviews: Analysts could leave the research to Bretton’s agents and focus on the decision when a customer or transaction triggered a fraud alert. Bretton compiled the case file automatically, pulling transaction history, identity verification data, and behavioral signals into a structured review package.
- Customer due diligence reviews: Periodic CDD reviews across the bank's fintech partnerships and direct customer base were handled systematically. Bretton maintained consistency across every case, surfacing only the exceptions that needed human judgment.
“The winning banks of the next 10 years are the ones that get better day by day in delivering products and services to their customers. And you have to do that through automation and tools.”
— David Becker, Chairman, Founder, and CEO
Together, First Internet Bank and Bretton have been able to optimize the bank’s four most critical compliance operations, creating a repeatable, auditable process that holds up under regulatory scrutiny.
Doubling business safely and compliantly
In their first year alone, First Internet Bank was able to drastically reduce time to complete customer diligence, saving over 24,000 hours annually. The combination of improved efficiency and renewed analyst focus enabled First Internet Bank to take on significantly higher case volumes while maintaining the quality and consistency of their reviews.
“Working with Bretton AI has been a home run. We’re more productive and doing more business with less overhead. It's a win all around.”
— David Becker, Chairman, Founder, and CEO
The impact extended into the bank’s standing as a regulated institution. When First Internet Bank completed its most recent regulatory examination, Bretton's work on the diligence process was among the factors that contributed to a clean outcome. It demonstrated that the gains in speed and scale didn't come at the expense of compliance quality.
The time savings were so immense that First Internet Bank’s SBA manager approached leadership to ask if they should reduce staff. David Becker, Chairman, Founder, and CEO at First Internet Bank, provided a clear directive that highlighted the true value of the technology: "No, I want you to do twice as much business."
By deploying Bretton, First Internet Bank successfully removed its barriers to growth. The bank is now positioned to scale its business without increasing headcount, proving that with the right trust infrastructure, financial institutions can achieve ambitious growth safely and compliantly.
