GreenStone Farm Credit Services Transforms Agricultural Lending with DocuSign CLM and nCino

Over a century ago, Congress passed the Federal Farm Loan Act—giving farmers better access to the capital they need to feed and fuel America. That milestone event led to the creation of one of the nation’s largest agricultural lending cooperatives, GreenStone Farm Credit Services.

GreenStone’s goal is simple: to be rural America's first choice for financial services. With a diverse loan portfolio, $12 billion in managed assets and over 28,000 member-owners across Michigan and Wisconsin, it’s been widely successful in bringing that vision to life. 

To keep the momentum going, GreenStone made a big investment in technology—radically transforming the lending experience. “Our industry has not traditionally been on the cutting edge when it comes to technology,” said Executive Vice President and CIO Steve Junglas. 

Paper-based loan forms and closing packages led to increased overhead, a lot of redundant data entry and long drives to branches for face-to-face signing ceremonies.

Using DocuSign solutions for financial services, GreenStone simplified the lending process while bridging the geographical divide between lending teams and the members they serve.

Accelerating the path from application to closing

From recreational land loans to equipment financing and operating lines of credit, there are a lot of nuances in the world of agricultural lending. But one thing’s the same across the board: Closing packages are about an inch and a half thick and require dozens of signatures. 

DocuSign eSignature expedited parts of the process, but there were still major bottlenecks when it came to preparing and reviewing documents. Staff were spending a big chunk of time rekeying customer and loan details from siloed systems. And if there were any errors, it was back to square one. 

Today, the path from application to closing is much more streamlined.

• Members apply for credit through an online portal, and loan details are ingested into nCino and Salesforce.
• Once the loan is approved, nCino kicks off workflows in DocuSign to prepare pre-closing documents—including early disclosures and deal statements—and route them to the member via eSignature.
• A loan service representative generates the final closing package in CLM, sends it to legal for review—and then to the member for final signoff.

CLM not only automates document generation, but it also facilitates collaboration between departments while streamlining legal reviews. Executed agreements are tagged and automatically moved into nCino and GreenStone’s cold storage system for easy access.

Cultivating growth through partnerships 

For Junglas, the beauty of CLM is its configurability. “There are a lot of document-generation tools out there, but most can’t handle complex logic,” he said. “DocuSign CLM has the ability to take state regulations and other factors into account and automatically generate the proper legal language for the deal.” The result has been a more efficient and more compliant lending process that members love. 

The benefits extend far beyond GreenStone’s 35 branches. The agricultural cooperative also manages the Centric Technology Collaboration, a team of experts working together to deliver leading-edge technology to other farm credit associations so they can better serve their local communities. By pulling their resources together, the collaboration gives smaller associations access to a larger IT operation—with stronger support and resources than they could achieve on their own. 

GreenStone partnered with DocuSign Professional Services to customize CLM for geographically dispersed farm credits with diverse portfolios and different state and local requirements. So far, they’ve gone live with 85 templates for the closing package. 

Bringing Professional Services onboard to manage the project and a Customer Success Architect to guide the CLM expansion ensured that the two partner implementers—West Monroe (Salesforce) and Micronet (CLM)—had full support for a smooth implementation. 

“The GreenStone team and the DocuSign team came together quite well and just tackled it,” said Junglas.  “It was an amazing go-live.”

Innovating for the next 100 years

As agriculture embraces a digital, connectivity-fueled transformation, the ag lending industry is moving toward a future built on efficient service, cooperative success and scalable growth. Digital tools like DocuSign are key. 

DocuSign Notary is part of GreenStone’s long-term vision to enable a fully digital experience for all lending transactions. “Having a solid platform that you can build on is critical because it paves the way for automation,” said Junglas. “And that’s the key to growing your business while getting results to your customers faster.”