The Lending Revolution: How Digital Credit Is Changing Banks from the Inside

Gerald Chappell, Holger Harreis, Andras Havas, Andrea Nuzzo, Theo Pepanides and Kayvaun Rowshankish

Faster credit decisions, vastly improved customer experience, 40% lower costs, and a more secure risk profile: here’s how to get there.

In Europe’s traditional banks, the median “time to decision” for small business and corporate lending in 2018 was 34 days.¹¹ Based on a McKinsey survey of 19 large European financial institutions. Median “time to cash” was nearly three months. In our view, these times will soon seem as antiquated and unacceptable as the three weeks it once took to cross the Atlantic. Leading European banks have embraced the digital lending revolution, bringing “time to yes” down to five minutes, and “time to cash” to less than 24 hours.

This is the profound result of a top priority for banks everywhere: the digital transformation of end-to-end credit journeys, including the customer experience and supporting credit processes. Credit is at the heart of most customer relationships, and digitising it has offered significant advantages to banks and customers alike. For the bank, successful transformations enhance revenue growth and achieve significant cost savings. One large European bank increased win rates by a third and average margins by over half as a