Lecture series
Choosing and running a lending system
For companies that want to start or scale a lending business, and for the people who must take the decision through internal approval: what a lending system has to do, whether to build, licence or outsource it, how records, personal data and security are handled, how integrations and day-to-day operations are kept under control, and a checklist to attach to the approval memo. Eight lessons, at the level of principles.
8 of 8 lessons published. Lesson 1 is free to read.
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- 01What a lending system must do, and where companies underestimate itA lending system is more than an application screen and a credit decision. This lesson sets out the six functions every loan passes through, why most of the work comes after the money is paid out, the areas that are easy to underestimate, what supervisors learned about data and reporting, and the questions to settle before choosing a system.
- 02Build, licence or outsource: how to decideThere are three ways to obtain a lending system, and each moves cost, control and risk to a different place, but never the responsibility. This lesson defines the three, sets out the criteria for choosing, the costs to count over three to five years, how lock-in and exit work, and what to know about source code, intellectual property and escrow.
- 03Records that survive an audit: who approved what, and whenAn auditor or supervisor does not ask whether a loan was right; they ask the company to show it. This lesson covers what a usable audit record contains, how logs are protected from quiet changes, the maker-checker rule for sensitive actions, how changes of terms and waivers are recorded, how changes to the system itself are approved, and how long records are kept.
- 04Personal data: consent, purpose, retention, access and transfers abroadA lending system holds identity documents, income, bank details and repayment histories. This lesson sets out the principles that data protection laws in many markets share, and what each means for the system: consent and purpose, retention, access and correction, security, and sending data to another country.
- 05Security principles: least privilege, a separate production environment, keys and secrets, and vendor accessSecurity in a lending system is decided less by tools than by a few principles applied without exception. This lesson sets out who governs security, and five principles a project lead can ask about: least privilege, keeping production apart, protecting keys and secrets, controlling vendor access, and being ready to respond to an incident.
- 06Integrations: banks and payments, eKYC, credit bureaus and messaging, and how to check the providersA lending system depends on outside services to identify customers, check their credit, move money and talk to them. This lesson looks at what each connection carries and what goes wrong, and ends with a due diligence checklist for the providers behind them.
- 07Operations and continuity: monitoring, incidents, lending through an outage, and change managementA lending system is judged on the days when something goes wrong. This lesson covers which operations are critical, what to monitor, how lending continues during an outage and is put right afterwards, backups that have actually been restored, and how changes are released without causing the next incident.
- 08A checklist to attach to the approval memoThe earlier lessons each ended with questions. This lesson gathers them into one checklist that a project lead can attach to an internal approval memo, with a short note on how to use it and who should own each answer.
Quiz and certificate 10 questions; those on lesson 1 are free to try. Read every published lesson and score 80% or more for a certificate of completion.
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