5-step audit to uncover your bank's cross-border opportunity
This method uncovers hidden cross-border opportunities, costing European banks 10–15% of their lending potential.
Most European banks reject 10-15% of potential lending volume without realizing it. Many of these customers never reach your lending funnel at all. Application forms and residency requirements filter them out before assessment, making this volume invisible to traditional measurement. Run this audit to quantify what you're missing.
Step 1: Measure the citizenship gap
What to check
- % of foreign residents among current account holders
- % of foreign residents among loan applicants
- Difference between the two numbers
What it reveals
If 15% of accounts but 0.5% of applications come from foreign residents, the gap signals significant demand that never reaches underwriting.
Step 2: Audit thin-file rejections
What to check
Work with Risk and Compliance to analyze patterns in thin-file rejections.
What to look for
- Recent foreign addresses in customer records
- International income sources or salary transfers
- Employment by foreign companies
- Cross-border transaction history
What it reveals
A significant portion of “thin-file” domestic rejections have foreign credit histories or income sources your system can’t assess.
Step 3: Compare to market size
What to check
- National census data for foreign residents in your region
- Eurostat migration figures
- Cross-border employment statistics
What it reveals
If your market has 200 000 foreign residents plus significant cross-border employment, but your applications show minimal foreign-related activity, the gap becomes quantifiable.
Step 4: Track invisible demand
What to measure (for 60 days)
- Digital application abandonment when citizenship fields appear
- Customer inquiries that don’t convert to applications
- Rejections tagged “insufficient credit data” (or similar)
What it reveals
Foreign customers often drop out before they appear in your application data. Two months of tracking shows the volume you’re not capturing.
Step 5: Test barrier removal
What to pilot
Create a streamlined process for existing foreign customers or integrate cross-border credit data from platforms like Mifundo (covering 70% of European population through one API or a simple web-based data platform that doesn’t require integration).
What to track
- Application volume change
- Approval rate change
- Portfolio performance after six months
What it reveals
Pilots typically show 30-40% higher approval rates and default performance below domestic averages when proper risk assessment becomes possible.
What banks discover
The customer segment you’re missing
- Seeks larger loan amounts (mortgages, business investments)
- Often outperforms domestic borrowers on default rates
- Represents 10-15% of lending volume in most European markets
Early adopters gain competitive advantage while others continue operating with blind spots
