Scaling CREF loans without increasing costs

2025 brings a double bind for commercial real estate (CRE) leaders: accelerate growth while navigating tighter operational bottlenecks. Banks want to grow their portfolios, but legacy systems and manual processes continue to slow things down. With credit decisions taking anywhere often taking months rather than weeks, and even longer for syndicated deals, teams may work across disconnected tools and manage deals of up to €200m in value primarily through local spreadsheets. Under this way of working, the only way to increase output is to add headcount: a costly, unsustainable model, particularly in a world where margins are shrinking. 

And yet, if done well, commercial real estate loans offer a large opportunity for banks. In 2024, European CRE investment volumes surged to €206 billion – a 23% year-on-year increase. Meanwhile, more than €300 billion of existing loans will need to be refinanced by the end of 2026: a major funding gap for banks to step into. Therefore banks have opportunities at both ends, with new originations and existing lifecycle deals that are due to expire. 

To scale sustainably and take advantage of this opportunity, banks need a process that’s fast, aligned, and built for complexity. In this article we’ll explore the operational cracks that stop CRE lending from scaling, what scaling commercial real estate (without the equivalent cost increase) really looks like and how a real-time, scalable solution for CRE lending looks like.

Explore SAP Fioneer’s Credit Workplace to see how banks are scaling CRE lending without scaling risk or complexity. 

The operational cracks that stop CRE lending from scaling 

Most commercial real estate teams are structured to win individual deals, not for scale across the business unit. Risk, servicing, and origination typically work in silos, with separate systems, documents, and definitions of the truth.  Beneath every loan lies a stack of processes (origination, underwriting, servicing, covenant tracking, and portfolio oversight) that still run through disconnected systems and manual workarounds. 

Here’s where the cracks begin to show when banks are looking to scale these types of loans: 

1. Risk accelerates faster than most banks can respond 
Volatility in CRE markets is rising – with interest rate fluctuations, tenant churn, hybrid working, and asset devaluations moving faster than traditional credit processes can track. Indeed, according to Savills, average office vacancy rates across Europe reached 8.4% in Q1 2025 – a modest rise, yet still one that is shifting faster than many landlords can keep up with. 
Alongside this change, most banks are still flying blind. Manual covenant checks, spreadsheet-based tracking and siloed data mean it can take months to spot changes in key metrics like occupancy drops, rising loan to value (LTV), or falling debt service coverage ratios (DSCRs). By the time a problem surfaces, the window to work with the borrower on corrective measures has closed. 
In fast-moving markets, that lag turns manageable issues into potential defaults and without real-time monitoring or automated alerts, credit deterioration could accelerate beyond the bank’s ability to stop it.

2. Regulation complexity increases while margins are shrinking 
Tightening regulatory demands, from IFRS9 / IFRS17 to ESG, are increasing the compliance burden across CRE portfolios.
At the same time, cost pressures are mounting. With margins under huge pressure, it’s getting more expensive to maintain regulatory compliance, particularly when everything is manual. Siloed data, lack of auditability, and fragmented approval workflows make it harder for banks to keep pace without adding more headcount or operational risk. 

3. Inefficiency is baked into every step of the process 
CRE lending remains one of the most complex workflows in banking, with long deal cycles, multiple stakeholders, and repeated data entry. If there’s still dual keying across systems, the customer information is entered multiple times – resulting in wasted time and rising operational risk.
To solve these challenges, banks need full transparency across the entire lifecycle. That means building a single source of truth, and enabling smarter, faster decisions at every stage from origination through to early risk detection.

What scaling commercial real estate lending – without the equivalent cost increase – really looks like 

Historically, the only way to grow CRE lending has been to grow teams and throw more people at the problem. But with tightening margins, that approach is no longer sustainable. The business opportunity may be growing but unless operations evolve, the cost base grows right alongside it.  

If you have one core system with shared data, automated alerts, and integrated workflows, banks can make faster, smarter decisions with fewer workarounds, fewer one-off fixes, and fewer end-of-quarter surprises. It also means that the front and back office are working from the same playbook with shared data, shared workflows, and shared visibility into what’s coming next. 

In practice, this looks like:  

Digitalization of CRE lending workflows: Much of CRE lending is still slowed down by paper trails and siloed information. Full digitalization fixes that. It connects the whole workflow so documents are uploaded once, key data is pulled out automatically, and teams spend less time chasing files and more time making decisions.

Transparency of deal data: In most banks, deal data is scattered across spreadsheets and different tools. With full transparency across the credit lifecycle, all the key information is captured once and shared across teams – meaning credit, risk, and portfolio managers are working from the same numbers, the same deal view, and the same reality in real time.  

Early warning signals of credit risk: When tenant churn, falling coverage, or covenant breaches happen, rather than rely on someone spotting it in a spreadsheet, smart triggers flag these risk signals automatically. This means teams can act early rather than react after the fact. 

A single workplace for collaboration: Instead of moving between systems or duplicating work, teams collaborate in one place. That means fewer emails, fewer handoffs, and less duplication. Everyone – wherever they’re based – can see the same deal, update the same data, and move faster. 

Compliance that’s built into every process: Audit readiness and access controls are already baked into the platform. Because it’s cloud-native, it’s also more cost efficient and easier to run. 

Together, these capabilities mean that banks are no longer stuck choosing between growing their commercial real estate portfolio and keeping their cost base under control. 

Rather, instead of following the well-trodden path of cyclical driven ‘hire and fire’ policies, they can handle more volume with their existing team. Analysts aren’t wasting hours on admin, risk teams aren’t buried in spreadsheets, and leadership gets a clear, real-time view of what’s happening across the entire book. 

How SAP Fioneer brings a real-time, scalable solution to CRE lending 

A central, transparent workspace is the missing foundation in most CRE lending teams, and it’s exactly where SAP Fioneer’s Credit Workplace delivers the biggest impact. 

Instead of relying on disconnected systems and manual covenant tracking, Credit Workplace gives banks a single digital environment to manage the full lending lifecycle. From origination through to servicing, amendments, and credit risk management, everything happens in one place – purpose-built for the complexity of CRE lending. 

Here’s how it helps banks scale without scaling risk or cost: 

• Digital workflows that reflect CRE lending: Unlike retrofitted platforms that rely on static templates and customized workflows, Credit Workplace is digitally engineered for the complexity of commercial real estate from day one. Every step – from origination to servicing – is fully digitized with structured workflows tailored to how CRE teams actually work. Granular metrics like lease breaks, expiry dates, vacancy levels, and rent rolls are tracked automatically in one shared system, risk assessments are applied consistently, and approvals are managed in-platform, so deals can be made faster and cleaner. 

• Real-time visibility into deal health: With volatile markets and illiquid assets, CRE lenders can’t afford delays. The Credit Workplace provides real-time visibility into deal performance, automatically surfacing risk indicators such as covenant breaches, falling DSCR, or market-value changes. Teams can quickly assess exposure and take action, whether that’s restructuring a non-performing loan or adjusting capital allocation, before risk compounds. 

• Scalable efficiency to grow without drag: With automation, intuitive interfaces, and seamless data flow across the lifecycle, Credit Workplace removes the need for dual keying or siloed data entry. Experts are freed up to focus on value-add tasks such as decision-making and relationship management. By standardizing how teams collaborate, and embedding auditability and compliance into the process, banks can scale their loan book without inflating their operational cost base and enhance property insights with both internal and market data. 

What’s more, the modular, cloud-based Credit Workplace can be integrated easily into banks’ existing infrastructure, unlike many legacy competitors that require complex transformation programs. 

Case study: How pbb improved both front and back-office efficiency  

When Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (pbb) – a leading European specialist lender in commercial real estate – set out to modernize its credit operations, the goal was to create a platform that could scale deal volume without scaling complexity. 

Like many legacy banks, pbb faced a common bottleneck: while the deal pipeline was growing, the underlying operating model couldn’t keep up. CRE lending processes across the lifecycle were disconnected, siloed, and inconsistent. 

From disjointed workflows to a single source of truth 

Seeing that CRE growth depends on operational control, not just capital, pbb partnered with SAP Fioneer to co-develop Credit Workplace: a fully integrated, end-to-end lending platform.
In just 18 months, the team delivered a live, scalable solution that underpins pbb’s commercial real estate operations.  

From incremental improvements to 20% efficiency gains and scalable growth 

Since going live, pbb has seen a 20% increase in credit process efficiency, faster, more consistent decision-making, stronger collaboration across origination, credit, and risk, and a modern data foundation ready for AI and predictive analytics. 

“By combining standard capabilities with institution-specific needs, we improved both front and back-office efficiency – and built the operational backbone we need to scale,” said Andreas Hoschek, the Director of Operations and Digitalisation at pbb. 

Read the full case study here.