Hawthorn River Sets Growth Record with 50 New Customers in 2022
St. Louis, MO.--(hawthornriver.com)-- Hawthorn River, a developer of end-to-end loan origination software for community banks, announced today that the company signed 50 new community banking customers to its platform in 2022. This record-setting growth represents a 200% increase in customers over the prior year end. The company enters 2023 with 75 customers across the United States with assets ranging from $20 Million to $8 Billion.
Hawthorn River launched its first customer in January of 2020. This proved to be a tenuous year for the company as COVID emerged a few months after the initial customer launch. Recognizing that bankers needed to focus on continuity of operations, the company shifted focus back to product development and partnership. The company ended 2020 with 5 customers signed on the platform.
The most notable partnerships coming out of 2020 were with CSI, a bank core processing company in Paducah, KY, and Compliance Solutions, a document generation company in Grand Rapids, MI. These two partnerships fueled significant growth for Hawthorn River in 2021, ending the year with 25 customers.
Then, in 2022, the growth accelerated each month of the year as Hawthorn River expanded its core partnerships to include DCI in Wichita, KS, and Fidelity Information Systems (FIS). By July of 2022, the company was signing 5-7 new banking customers per month. When asked about this growth, Jon Rigsby, CEO and Co-Founder of Hawthorn River, said “This level of growth blew my mind. When we started Hawthorn River, we envisioned what it would be like to add 1 or 2 customers a month, but this is a completely different level. At the end of the day, I do not measure our success in customer growth but rather on the quality of service and solutions delivered to our customers. If we get the delivery right, our growth will work itself out”.
Hawthorn River attributes much of its growth to pent-up demand. Rigsby commented on this point by saying “The long-standing legacy solutions in the market have let down community bankers. Community bankers deserve better, which is why we founded Hawthorn River”. As the company enters 2023, its focus will be on scaling processes and resources to support the growing demand.