Bank of Punjab cuts Loan Processing From 5 Days to 60 Seconds with AdalFi

With a clear mandate from the President of BOP to expand the uncollateralized lending program, Asif Riaz, Group Chief of Consumer and SME Banking, began charting new ways to unlock growth in the SME and consumer lending segments.

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SME lending, in particular, represented enormous potential for BOP. Yet, as Rameez Bokhari, Head of Products and Policies, explained, scaling the bank’s traditional approach was far from simple.

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SMEs often lack reliable data and information needed for loan decisions, he shared. We worked with whatever data we could gather, then tried to interpret it to make an informed judgment.

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This manual, resource-heavy process of assessing small businesses (the ‘S’ in SME) not only slowed down credit evaluation but also restricted the bank’s ability to scale its SME portfolio.

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On the consumer side, inefficiencies in core business processes created additional roadblocks. Application entry, DBR calculations, KYC compliance, and follow-ups on approval workflows consumed valuable staff time.

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Even when customers urgently required funds, there was little BOP could do to speed things up. The minimum turnaround time was five days, noted Faisal Butt, Head of Unsecured Loans. Teams that could have been driving sales and engaging with customers instead found themselves bogged down by lengthy reviews and approvals—leading to stalled conversions and, at times, customer drop-offs.

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With its strong depositor base and a team committed to customer growth, BOP recognized a common thread across its product lines: untapped opportunity.

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The answer was clear. The bank needed an automated credit assessment, decisioning, and lending solution—one capable of integrating prospect qualification, application workflows, and loan disbursement into a seamless journey. The solution also had to free up staff capacity, scale lending effectively, protect sensitive customer data, comply with strict regulations, and manage overall portfolio risk.

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That’s when BOP found AdalFi. Where once credit assessment, onboarding, and disbursement had been siloed across Risk, Business, and Operations, AdalFi’s Digital Lending Platform introduced an end-to-end integrated solution. It unified the customer journey and streamlined internal processes, setting the stage for efficiency and scale.

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After experiencing the AdalFi team’s responsiveness, transparency, and reliability firsthand, BOP knew they had found the right partner—a partnership built not just for efficiency, but for growth.

Onboarding with AdalFi was collaborative and hands-on, focusing on adopting AdalFi’s credit scoring algorithms, envisioning customer journeys, integrating the AdalFi platform with Oracle FLEXCUBE (BOP’s core banking platform) and ensuring end-to-end process automation. The rollout began with payroll customers, allowing BOP to refine digital onboarding and internal workflows before expanding across all unsecured loan products.

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For SMEs, AdalFi’s AI-powered credit assessment leverages depositor data and transaction history, rather than relying on scattered, unreliable information and formal financial statements that small businesses often struggle to provide. AdalFi combines transactional data with their patented AI- and ML-based credit assessment tool to predict repayment patterns, Rameez explains. This allows us to identify creditworthiness quickly.

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This approach eliminates the need for extensive manual document collection and assessment, allowing BOP to process more SME applications with significantly greater confidence without requiring additional team capacity. Now, uncollateralized SME lending is a scalable and predictable growth channel with carefully managed risks.

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In consumer lending, AdalFi automates every step of BOP’s lending process, eliminating multiple points of review. Consumers just have to click a link and verify their information, explains Urooj Sohail, Head of Retail Finance. Then, AdalFi runs the magic for us on the back end. Applications are approved based on internal rules and algorithms, and the customer has the money credited to their account.

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Rapid lending decisions also enable BOP to respond to urgent requests in real-time. In one case, our customer needed a loan issued quickly to cover a medical emergency, Urooj says. I had him apply digitally, and his loan was processed in 15 minutes. These are the kind of moments that we and our customers cherish.

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For customers, digital onboarding includes OTP-based acceptance, integrated document archiving, and paperless processes that run in real-time. This eliminates delays and reduces customer drop-offs, while freeing up significant staff capacity and ensuring data accuracy and integrity.

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With quicker lending and no manual steps, staff focus on high-value work, including customer engagement and sales. Because we’ve improved the productivity of our own staff, customers are much happier, Urooj says. AdalFi helps us find ways to bridge the gap between ourselves and customers, and cross-sell in the process.

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From a security standpoint, AdalFi’s entire system is deployed on BOP’s internal servers, thereby preventing data breaches and eliminating regulatory concerns related to data privacy. With AdalFi’s modern, customer-centric lending technology, BOP has established a strong foundation for sustainable, future-ready growth.