When a fintech asks how to cut time-to-decision, the instinct is usually to loosen thresholds or add headcount. Neither is necessary in most cases, because the delay isn't coming from the decision itself, it's coming from everything that happens before the decision can be made.
In engagement after engagement, the biggest source of delay is the handoff between marketing qualification and underwriting review: document collection, data re-entry, and applicants sitting in a queue with no visibility into what's actually blocking them. None of that requires changing what underwriting is willing to approve.
A 60% reduction in time-to-decision, in practice, usually comes from three unglamorous changes: automating document collection using data already captured earlier in the funnel, giving underwriting a live view of where applicants are stalling instead of a static queue, and removing manual re-entry between systems that were never designed to talk to each other.
None of this touches risk appetite. The approval bar stays exactly where compliance and risk want it. What changes is how much friction an eligible applicant has to fight through to get there, and friction is not a compliance requirement, it's an implementation gap.
The teams that get this right treat underwriting speed as a systems design problem, not a policy negotiation. That reframe alone tends to unblock the conversation between growth and risk faster than any process change.