How a leading Dutch bank accelerates its leasing process with Pega
From a manual application process to an automated leasing process
One of the largest banks in the Netherlands provides a wide range of financial services to both retail and business customers. Its business banking clients rely on the bank for services including payments, wealth management, business financing, and support for international trade.
The bank also finances investments in business assets, such as delivery vans, production lines, and office equipment. Within its Business Lending division, leasing is an important financing solution with significant growth potential. However, that growth was constrained by a time-consuming and inefficient application process.
The challenge: transforming a manual process into a digital application journey
The challenge was to redesign the process so that customers could complete their lease application largely independently, with minimal involvement from bank employees. To build this new process, the bank engaged BPM Company. Jimmy de Jong (CLSA) joined the project as Lead Developer.
“The goal was to build a process that would enable customers to complete their lease application and reach a signed contract without the involvement of a bank employee.”
De Jong: “Within Business Lending, there was a clear opportunity to grow market share through leasing. Not by changing the product itself, but by simplifying and accelerating the application process.
There was already an application process in place, but it relied heavily on manual checks. As a result, customers often had to wait a long time for an offer, causing many to abandon the process before completing their application.
With this type of financing, the customer first selects a business asset from a supplier. They then apply to the bank for financing to purchase the asset, which serves as collateral for the loan.
For now, only the final step still requires manual review: verifying that the requested loan amount matches the invoice provided by the supplier. Pega orchestrates the remainder of the process.”
Staring of with a Blueprint
“We started by generating a Blueprint. Based on a prompt, Pega Blueprint created an initial version of the process. We then refined it to align as closely as possible with the way we ultimately wanted to implement the solution.
The Blueprint quickly provided visibility into the scope of the project, including the full application lifecycle, the required process steps, and the integrations with other systems. It also visualized the entire process from the outset. Most of the development effort focused on integrating with existing systems. These integrations were needed to retrieve customer data and automatically generate contracts. Wherever possible, we leveraged reusable integration modules that are used across multiple workflows.
Next, we determined which data needed to be retrieved and stored, and which user personas would interact with the application. Based on those requirements, we built a prototype in Pega. A Blueprint serves as an initial application design that can be imported into the Pega development environment and further refined. This allowed business stakeholders to click through the application and experience the future process long before a single line of production code had been written.”
From prototype to realisation
“Once the prototype was complete, we assembled the delivery team: a squad consisting of developers, business analysts, a product owner, and a tester. We imported the Blueprint as the foundation, which meant the entire process was already in place—only the integrations still needed to be implemented. The team then focused on building those integrations. Some could be based on reusable components, while others required the development of new modules.
Development of the first phase has now been completed, and the team is preparing for deployment to the production environment. While the solution is not yet live, its technical and functional foundations are firmly in place.”
One seamless process, delivered through the customer portal
“Once the solution goes live, business customers will be able to start a lease application directly from the bank’s customer portal. This automatically initiates the entire application workflow. Although all user interfaces are built within our Pega application, Pega Constellation allows us to deliver the complete experience seamlessly within the customer portal. As a result, customers never notice that they are interacting with multiple systems.
Internal employees can still create or open a case on behalf of a customer. Human intervention remains possible whenever needed, for example if a customer gets stuck during the application process.”
What it delivers
- Significantly faster process. Thanks to extensive automation, customers can, in some cases, complete the entire application process, including signing the contract, in as little as 15 minutes.
- Higher customer satisfaction. Less waiting, less friction, and faster decisions.
- More efficient use of employees. Routine tasks such as re-entering customer data and performing standard checks are largely automated. This allows employees to focus on exceptions and customers who need additional support.
- Fewer errors. By integrating with existing systems and reducing manual work, the solution minimizes the risk of human error. Over time, even the final verification step—matching the supplier invoice with the loan application—could be automated using AI.
“We will begin with existing retail customers, followed by new customers and business customers. This phased rollout approach enables us to deploy the solution relatively quickly, with the first go-live planned for early 2027.”
