Client Name

JS Bank Limited

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Fawad Ahmed

SBS Thought Leadership Areas

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

SBS Thought Leadership Area Justification

Our ELP falls under the thought leadership category of Entrepreneurship and Innovation as, although the project does not focus on the aspect of venture creation in relation to financial services, at its core, the project involves innovation in its entirety, where the focus lies on how an existing financial services firm can innovate its customer onboarding experience using new technology and regulatory requirements, as well as competitive positioning. The proposed solutions like biometric KYC incorporation, live credit bureau APIs, and in-app pre-approval engines all fall under the realm of innovation tools that can be used by any bank undergoing digital transformation in emerging economies such as Pakistan.

Aligned SDGs

GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

Aligned SDGs Justification

In particular, this project connects with three UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) is achieved by minimizing barriers to consumer credit, helping  families  and  small  businesses  fund  productive  investments  such  as  transportation, renewable  energy,  and  home  improvements,  which  are  required  for  generating  income  and participating in the economy. SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) is realized by conducting research into the improvement of digital infrastructure of consumer finance. Without having a modern system of credit, no innovations in this sphere can be applied in Pakistan's banking sector. Finally, SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) concerns this project, as the current inefficient manual system puts at a disadvantage those borrowers who are digitally connected yet geographically distant from any branches and therefore have difficulties visiting one.

NDA

No

Abstract

This Experiential Learning Project, (ELP) commissioned by JS Bank Limited's Consumer Banking & Agri Strategic Business Unit (SBU), views at how digital consumer onboarding is performing across the bank’s five main lending products: auto finance, home finance, solar finance, gold finance and personal loans. The whole process is reviewed against the State Bank of Pakistan's (SBP) Consolidated Customer Onboarding Framework (CCOF) 2025, which requires contactless biometric KYC, live e-CIB V2.0 API integration, real time application tracking, plus a maximum two-working-day turnaround time (TAT) for all consumer loan applications. For the approach, the study uses a qualitative, primary-source methodology, and it relies on direct review of bank websites, product pages, application forms, SBP regulatory circulars, and structured meetings with JS Bank's Consumer Banking leadership. This same method is extended across five other competitor banks - Bank Alfalah, Meezan Bank, HBL, UBL and Mashreq Pakistan – to produce a comparative benchmarking analysis. The main finding is that JS Bank has exactly one truly digital consumer lending product - the Instant Personal Loan. It is available only to pre-selected existing customers, through the JS Mobile app. The other four products still operate through lead-capture-only forms, then manual branch-based processing ensues, with estimated TATs from seven to sixty working days. None of the four journeys operate using KYC integration as required by CCOF 2025, thus making them non-compliant. On the other hand, the competitors such as Bank Alfalah has become our study’s local benchmark through their use of Alfa App, which has achieved near CCOF compliant end-to- end digital onboarding for existing customers across its product portfolio. In September 2025, Mashreq Pakistan launched as a fully digital branchless bank; a major long-term competitive threat. Mashreq seeks to introduce consumer lending within twelve to twenty-four months. The report concludes with a four-track digital transformation journey for JS Bank given from a lens of priority as it focuses on spanning immediate quick wins to strategic platform investments. The dedicated TOR fulfillment section explicitly connects each project deliverable to the findings and outputs procured. The findings become part of the growing body of knowledge on financial digitization in emerging markets and carry direct meaning and implications for Pakistan’s banking sector as it adapts to the CCOF 2025 compliance deadline.

Document Type

Restricted Access

Document Name for Citation

Experiential Learning Project

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