Inside the 2025 Canadian Lenders Summit: Where Innovation Meets Opportunity for SMBs

By Joshua Reynolds, CEO & Co-founder of Approval Pathway

Inside the 2025 Canadian Lenders Summit Recently I attended the 2025 Canadian Lenders Summit in Toronto with our CTO Dennis Newel. The event brought together leaders from across Canada’s financial ecosystem, including banks, credit unions, fintechs, and innovators, to tackle one central question:

How do we build a smarter, faster, and more inclusive lending environment for Canadian small and medium-size businesses (SMBs)?

It’s a question close to our hearts at Approval Pathway. Every conversation at the Summit reinforced why the work we’re doing - helping lenders fund more SMBs in less time - really matters.

1. Canada’s Challenger Bank: The EQ Bank Conversation

The day opened with a fireside chat featuring Chadwick Westlake, the newly appointed President & CEO of Equitable Bank (EQ).

Drawing on his experience as CFO driving acquisitions and integrations, Chadwick outlined EQ’s bold plans for growth in Canada’s rapidly evolving digital banking space.

But what stood out the most for me wasn’t just the strategy, it was the number:

$200 million in undeployed capital.

That is $200 million that could be helping Canadian SMBs hire, expand, and innovate. We couldn’t help but see the connection, as our platform helps lenders like EQ quickly assess and activate opportunities they might otherwise miss due to staffing or technology constraints.

2. Automating the Underwriting Workflow

Next up was “How to Automate Your Underwriting Workflow”, moderated by Hamid Akbari (CEO, Blanc Labs), featuring Maik Taro Wehmeyer (CEO, Taktile), Matt Browning (President, Trust Science), and Tyler Haynes (Sr. Director, Decisions).

This discussion hit close to home for me. It explored how AI, automation, and human judgement can work together to make underwriting not only faster but also smarter. That’s the same philosophy behind Approval Pathway. Our platform handles the repetitive, manual work so credit teams can focus on the relationships and insights that actually drive lending decisions.

While all speakers offered valuable perspectives, Maik Taro Wehmeyer stood out as a visionary. His grasp of the future of banking and automation was years ahead of the curve and validated many of the principles we built into Approval Pathway’s architecture.

3. Business Lending Through Challenging Markets

We took in the insightful conversation with panelists Booker Cornea (FNBC) and Kevin Vankampen (Meridian), moderated by Adil Hassam (BDC) that highlighted how lenders are adapting in volatile markets.

Both offered sharp insights into relationship-driven lending and succession financing. They shared a truth every credit union knows well: great lending is still about trust. The opportunity now is to combine that human strength with tools that make it faster and easier to deliver capital to SMBs.

4. Fraud in the Age of AI

The “Fraud Inc.” session featuring executives from KPMG, Equifax, RBC, and CIBC, was a wake-up call for everyone in the room.

Fraud risk is rising rapidly and the resources being deployed to combat it are immense. It reinforced one of our core design choices: build compliance and verification into every file from the start. Complete documentation and visual pre-underwriting aren’t just about efficiency; they’re about protecting both lenders and borrowers in a digital age.

5. Funding the 99.7%: The Deloitte SMB Finance Session

For Dennis and me, the highlight of the Summit was Deloitte’s session, “Funding the 99.7%: How to Fix SMB Finance” by Jean Dauvin and Ketan Bhole from Monitor Deloitte.

Their presentation revealed fresh data from Deloitte’s 2025 Canadian Business Banking Survey, which surveyed 500 small and medium-sized SMBs across the country. The insights were striking and, for us, deeply affirming.

The Backbone of Canada’s Economy

There are 1.09 million SMBs in Canada, representing 99% of all businesses, 64% of private-sector jobs, and nearly 50% of GDP.
Most operate on slim margins and rely on fewer than 100 employees, yet collectively drive half the economy’s output.

Top Challenges

At least 2 in 5 SMBs say their financial institution isn’t addressing their biggest challenges:

79% report high operational costs
78% cite inflation or rising input costs
72% struggle with inadequate funding to scale
71% face heavy debt levels
41% note increased competition

How SMBs Use Financing

Deloitte found that 72% of SMBs use financing simply to cover day-to-day working capital, not to fund growth.

Capital is rarely being used for expansion, digital modernization, or efficiency improvements, a clear signal that lenders need to simplify and accelerate access to growth-oriented credit.

The Experience Gap

Speed and duplication remain major friction points:

1 in 4 SMBs said they must provide the same information multiple times.
1 in 3 said excessive documentation is a top issue.
1 in 3 experience long waits for credit decisions.

Even more telling:

1 in 3 SMBs would accept less favourable financing terms for faster approvals.
1 in 3 waited over a month for funds.
1 in 4 abandoned their applications altogether due to slow turnaround times.

When businesses can’t access working capital quickly, local economies slow down. This is precisely the gap Approval Pathway is closing. Our automation of document collection, verification, and scoring eliminates redundant steps, helping lenders approve more deals faster.

What SMBs really want are:

A partner with the right insights,
Integrated solutions that connect financial tools, and
Quick access to expert advisors when they need support.

For Dennis and me, it was surreal to watch Deloitte’s data validate the exact pain points we are working to solve: inefficient intake, slow decisioning, lack of integration, and limited visibility into borrower health.

Conclusion

The 2025 Canadian Lenders Summit was more than an event; it was proof that lenders across Canada are ready for change.

The message was clear: the future of commercial lending belongs to those who can combine automation, data, and human insight into a single, efficient workflow.

That’s exactly the future Approval Pathway is helping lenders build - one smarter workflow, one funded small business, and one stronger community at a time.