What triage does:

1. Appetite screening: Does this submission fit our appetite?
2. Completeness check: Do we have all required documents?
3. Prioritization: High-value/high-fit submissions move to the front
4. Routing: Assign to the right underwriter based on expertise and workload
5. Data preparation: Extract key info so underwriters aren't hunting through PDFs

Without effective triage, submissions arrive in random order, out-of-appetite work consumes underwriting time, and high-value opportunities get stuck behind low-probability deals.

The shift: Leading teams treat triage as a strategic filter, not just an admin task. They use appetite criteria, submission completeness, and deal size to route work intelligently rather than relying on first-in, first-out manual sorting.

The constraint isn't underwriting capacity—it's intake friction.

Where capacity is actually lost:

• Not during underwriting (the expertise is there)
• During intake, triage, and data cleanup (before underwriting begins)

When you eliminate the manual work, the misfit submissions, and the slow handoffs that eat up underwriters' time, you unlock capacity you didn't know you had.

Same team. Same expertise. 2-3X the throughput.

The fix: Eliminate intake friction first. Scale headcount second.