Westpac's automated credit assessment system LOLA, which was introduced for small business last December, is being trialled for use in the bank's middle market business after a successful first year of operation.LOLA (Live Online Lending Application) crunches the numbers on business customer transaction data and issues conditional loan approvals. Customers are alerted that they have a conditional approval.Since last December 4100 loans pre-approved by LOLA have gone through to settlement.Westpac general manager of small business, Julie Rynski, said the quality of the loans has been no different to loans generated in a more conventional manner.Rynski said the system has had a few upgrades over the course of the year. Originally used to pre-approve business loans and business credit cards, the system can now be used to pre-approve equipment finance and will soon include mortgages.The system will soon include an automatic credit bureau search in the process, which will speed up the approval times.Rynski said the time saving has been the most significant benefit for small business customers."In some cases a customer can come in to talk about buying a new piece of equipment and with LOLA we can finalise the approval in a couple of hours and have the money available the next day," she said."It also makes the application easy. Because the pre-approval is based on an automated review of the customer's merchant transactions and account history, in many cases they don't have to have to prepare any financial information for us."