How Financial Firms Are Using Generative AI to Cut Lending Times From 30 Minutes to 6 Seconds

From instant document reviews to AI-powered chatbots, financial services companies are deploying generative AI to transform customer experience and operational speed.

Figure Lending, the largest nonbank HELOC provider in the US, processes lengthy legal documents in under six seconds with over 99.5% accuracy — tasks that previously took agents 30 minutes each. The company runs more than 90 custom machine learning models on a vendor-agnostic platform that integrates Google, OpenAI, and proprietary AI tools across marketing, loan processing, and customer service.

Key Takeaways

• Figure Lending reduced document processing time from 30 minutes to under 6 seconds using generative AI, with 99.5% accuracy across its HELOC origination pipeline.
• Financial firms report that AI-driven improvements extend beyond speed — Forrester research shows improved customer experience is the top external benefit, with self-service and agent productivity as leading use cases.
• S&P Global Energy partnered with Microsoft to make its commodity data AI-ready, enabling customers to surface insights through natural language across multiple cloud platforms.

The pattern emerging across finance is consistent: generative AI works best when it handles data-intensive, repetitive tasks while human professionals focus on judgment, relationship management, and complex decision-making. Firms that treat AI as a tool for capacity expansion rather than headcount reduction are seeing the strongest returns.

Read the full article on BizTech Magazine