David O'Connell

David O’Connell is a Strategic Advisor with Aite-Novarica’s Commercial Banking team, where his primary coverage area is lending. A former commercial lender of 14 years, David brings to his lending coverage extensive hands-on and granular knowledge of banks’ challenges in building businesses that lend safely, cost-effectively, and at scale. Broadly scoped, David's coverage of lending encompasses the small-and-midsize-business market, commercial and industrial markets, automation’s benefits for scaling lending operations, fraud deterrence in lending, and the lending industry’s recent transformation by the COVID-19 pandemic in general and relief programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program in particular. David’s coverage of lending encompasses the entirety of the loan life cycle: from the fielding of loan opportunities through their onboarding to the credit process, underwriting, approval, and post-close servicing.

David began his career in commercial lending with formal credit training, later holding roles in underwriting and relationship management; he first specialized in large syndicated loans and later focused on loans to technology companies. Prior to joining Aite-Novarica Group, David covered the analytics and workforce management spaces and was the author of a large body of ROI-related content. He has spoken at user events for a variety of vendors. David has written or contributed to articles published at Time Magazine, the American Bankers Association, Dow Jones Newswires, and the Global Association of Risk Professionals.

David holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Providence College and an MBA from Boston University.