10x Banking and ezbob have partnered to help banks launch SME lending products faster, pairing core banking with lending orchestration.
The partnership integrates ezbob’s lending-orchestration platform with the modular core and ledger from 10x Banking. The goal is for banks to bring SME lending products to market in weeks instead of months, with lower delivery risk.
How the integration divides responsibilities
ezbob runs the end-to-end lending layer: onboarding, applications, credit decisioning, and AI agents, while 10x Banking provides the core and ledger capabilities used to define and operate the lending product and to keep an accurate financial system of record.
The integration is open, so banks can connect specialist components without committing to a single closed suite. Components already deployed can also be reused when a bank adds further lending products, so it does not need to build a separate silo for each one.
ezbob reports that products built on its platform have gone live in as little as six weeks. In those deployments, more than 90% of applicants completed an application in under five minutes, and 94% of approvals were automated. The companies say that reusing components, together with an AI-first deployment method, has let institutions shorten time to market further for later products.
Why the focus on SME lending
The UK is the starting market for the partnership. SMEs account for 99.9% of all private businesses there, yet SME lending remains one of the most persistent digital experience gaps in UK financial services. Incumbent banks have digitalised and automated simpler retail journeys, such as current account onboarding and smaller personal loans. SME lending, however, involves considerably more complexity.
According to the companies, previous efforts to close this gap have stalled for two reasons. First, systems built on workflow tools or legacy cores move an application through internal steps without creating a connected customer journey, and secondly, those systems also become costly to operate over time.
Okan Ozaltin, Chief Product and Technology Officer at 10x Banking, said banks are often asked to choose between a broad suite that is difficult to adapt and a set of point solutions that do not fully connect. In Ozaltin’s view, neither option gets a lender to market quickly.
In addition, Yaron Shoshani, Chief Technology Officer at ezbob, said the platform was built to digitise the lending journey itself, rather than automate internal processes on top of systems not designed for that purpose. The official noted that combining it with a tier-one bank-grade core allows a lender to launch a complete SME product, automate decisions where policy permits, and reuse components for additional lending products.
The companies describe the UK SME launch as the first step in a global partnership, which they intend to extend to further markets and lending lines over time. They have not disclosed a timeline for the expansion, nor have they named specific target markets.
