Borrowing money is linked to the biggest events of our lives— everything from the honeymoon of your dreams to opening a small business. This makes it one of the most important customer journeys out there.

But actually getting a loan is often a frustrating experience.Lending is one of the least digitized services in banking and usually involves a tedious application experience, as well as a lengthy wait time. This is mainly due to the inherent credit risk involved, which typically requires review by multiple departments, as well as multiple steps and complex workflows.

And the financial institutions that update their lending customer experience? In many cases, they simply retain the cumbersome steps and requirements from their past, ensuring the new journeys are nothing but a digital version of the same old story. 1 But customers aren’t buying it anymore, after being spoiled by the instant gratification of embedded players like Klarna or Afterpay. They deserve better, and they know it.