Fortune India Banking & NBFCs Summit 2026: Fintechs focus on customer journey, AI as digital lending evolves

Digital lenders are increasingly focusing on making borrowing faster and simpler, while using data and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve credit assessment and underwriting, speakers said at a panel titled Winning in the Digital Lending Era at Fortune India’s Banking & NBFCs Summit 2026.

Hemant Gala, CEO of PhonePe Lending Services, said the transition from payments to lending had brought several learnings from the payments business, particularly around customer experience. He said speed, simplicity and engagement were among the key principles that had carried over from payments into lending. According to Gala, lenders need to ensure that customers are offered the right loan through trusted partners while also developing a better understanding of their immediate needs.

Gala said lending could no longer rely only on traditional marketing methods to identify potential borrowers. Instead, transaction data and customer behaviour could help lenders understand when a customer may need credit and offer it at the appropriate point in their journey. “On the lending journey, there are two fundamental pillars: the user interface and the infrastructure layer. These are the two areas we are investing in,” he said.

He said reducing friction in areas such as KYC and mandates was important to making the borrowing journey easier. Lenders also need to ensure that customers are guided through every stage of the process and understand what is required of them.

AI and data reshape lending

Deepak Jain, CEO and co-founder of FlexiLoans, said technology was changing how lenders developed credit models and processed information. He said AI and machine learning were helping lenders work with larger amounts of data and build models faster. Jain said agentic AI was also helping improve the speed and precision of model development. “Agentic AI has enabled us to build models faster and with greater precision, resulting in significantly better business outcomes for us,” he said.

Jain said AI was being used across different parts of the lending process, including analysing unstructured data and improving decision-making. He said processes that previously took significantly longer could now be completed in less time with the help of technology.

Deepak Mendiratta, CEO of PayU Finance, said trust and product quality were critical to building long-term customer relationships in digital lending. “Trust begins when you engage directly with customers. The second key factor is the product itself,” he said.

Mendiratta said PayU’s experience in payments had also provided lessons for its lending business. He said customers, particularly small merchants, were increasingly looking for speed and convenience when accessing credit.

He said many small merchants and retailers remained underserved by formal credit and that lenders needed to find ways to understand their businesses and provide suitable products. According to Mendiratta, the ability to provide credit quickly could be particularly important for small businesses, where working capital requirements can arise frequently.

The speakers said the evolution of digital lending would therefore depend on more than simply increasing access to credit. A combination of smoother customer journeys, better use of behavioural data, stronger trust and technology-led underwriting is increasingly becoming central to how lenders acquire and retain customers.