Customer Success
Sherlok Overcomes Big Bank Barriers to Automate Spend for its High-Growth Team
By bypassing traditional banking roadblocks, this AI-driven fintech saved its sales team hours of weekly admin while securing corporate credit.
The Challenge
Sherlok, Australia’s first AI-driven retention platform for mortgage brokers, faced a common but stifling hurdle during its scale-up phase: the inability to access corporate credit. Despite the founder's track record, traditional financial institutions refused to issue corporate cards to the high-growth startup.
This roadblock forced the company into an inefficient reimbursement model. Senior employees were required to use personal funds for business expenses, creating financial friction and an administrative burden that threatened to distract the team from their core mission of client retention.
"As a company, I think it’s a bit rich to ask someone, especially your key senior employees, to use their own money to pay for business expenses, then force them through a horrendous reimbursement process. It’s slow, it’s complicated, and it also doesn’t make business sense."
The Solution
Refusing to accept the slow manual processes mandated by big banks, Sherlok turned to Archa. The platform provided the agility the startup needed, allowing them to issue cards instantly to senior team members for everything from domestic travel to software subscriptions.
Unlike traditional banks, which required weeks of paperwork to change cardholder details, Archa allowed Sherlok to manage their spend infrastructure dynamically.
“I can easily issue new team member’s their own cards or close cards for those that no longer need them. That process alone with the bank would have previously taken 7+ days and was always super clunky. With Archa, it’s literally a few clicks or taps, and it’s done.”
The Results
By implementing Archa, Sherlok successfully automated its "lowest cost items," effectively removing the administrative tax on its revenue-generating teams. The sales and marketing departments no longer waste valuable time on manual expense reports.
Instead, the team has shifted that energy back into converting sales and servicing customers. The company has moved all business spending onto the Archa platform, ensuring scalability as they continue to hire and grow.
"I don’t want our Sales or Marketing teams spending 1-2 hours a week submitting expenses when that time can be better spent converting more sales and getting more customers. By issuing them their own Archa card, they have that time to focus on those higher-value tasks."
