European retail loan marketplace

The Challenge:

Layla Habib, Head of Growth at a rapidly expanding European loan marketplace faced a critical challenge: scaling its sales motion while holding conversion rates steady in a high growth environment.

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During her first two years at the company, Layla developed a repeatable sales process underpinned by a digital funnel, optimized through extensive A|B testing.

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In recent months Layla shifted her focus to growing the top of the funnel, leading to 50%+ monthly lead volume growth for four consecutive months. The step-change in lead volume placed a significant amount of strain within the company’s support team.

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“Even though we had an effective and repeatable sales process, the strain on our sales team was becoming unmanageable. They were burning out, often spending time on low-value leads. Many leads were falling through the cracks. We needed to reduce the workload without compromising the quality of our interactions with leads to protect our conversion rates,” Layla explained.

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Layla knew that their current setup couldn't keep pace with the growing demand. Much of the work was repetitive—like answering frequently asked questions and verifying documents—making automation with AI a logical next step.

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As her first move, Layla experimented with building AI automations in-house with low-code solutions like Writer and Retool. In testing, the internally developed AI struggled to understand lead intent and often failed to communicate effectively,

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"We have a small data science team. They were quick to get something up and running, but the results were underwhelming. We dedicated a few sprint to this effort but weren’t getting any closer to the results we needed. We learned a great deal from the experience and it was clear that we’d need outside help to crack this”, said Layla

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Recognizing the need for external expertise, the company sought a partner capable of delivering a tailored and scalable solution to automate sales’ workflow without degrading the sales experience.

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Partner Considerations:

When asked about the criteria she used to select an external partner, Habib highlighted:

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• Lending and B2C Sales Funnel Expertise: The ideal partner had to possess a deep understanding of the lending industry and the nuances of sales-supported digital funnels.
• A hands on approach: the team had to understand the mechanics of their funnel and the handover with sales/support teams and own the design and implementation of the AI solution end-to-end.
• Customization and Integration: the solution needed to layer into the company’s loan origination flow with minimal changes to the funnel or supporting systems.
• Regulatory Compliance: The company was a PSD2 regulated institution that exchanged personally identifiable financial data with multiple banks in order to find the best rate for their leads. To remain compliant, all customer data had to be kept within the safety of their private servers. They were barred from sending any customer data to a third party, so any partner they worked with had to have the ability to deploy their AI solution within the company’s private cloud.
• Scalability: The solution had to be able to support 10k+ monthly leads without implications to performance

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“The speed at which we were growing caused things to break left and right. I did not need a software platform, I needed a solution and a capable team that would make some of the problems go away” Layla emphasized

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Working with Konko AI:

After evaluating several potential partners, the fintech chose Konko AI. Konko’s team quickly demonstrated a deep understanding of the company’s funnel, the role of sales and the company’s growing pains.

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“Unlike the other vendors we spoke to, Konko AI’s agent is specialized in loan origination sales workflows, it’s not just another chatbot. The team is impressive and they could deploy their solution in our AWS. They were the clear choice”, said Layla.

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Konko customized and deployed Kora within the company’s private AWS account. Kora’s mission is to act as a helpful companion to leads as they go through the company’s loan application funnel. Kora answers questions that would previously go to sales. Kora verifies lead documentation and works with leads to troubleshoot documentation errors. Finally, Kora re-engages leads who started the loan application process but did not complete it, further improving conversion rates.

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The Results:

Optimized Sales Team Efficiency: Before Kora, each close would require 10 sales touch points on average to close. After Kora, 90% touch points were conducted automatically. Not only that but the leads that did make it to sales were high-intent.

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“Kora not only qualified leads before passing them to sales but also provided neatly organized summaries of what was top of mind for each lead. This allowed our sales team to focus on closing deals rather than wasting time speaking to 5 uninterested leads for every qualified lead

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Higher conversion rate: Even with a fourfold increase in lead volume, the company’s conversion rates grew 15% across the board (+3x for leads required to provide ‘additional documentation’ a process that was previously manual)

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“I didn’t think it would be possible to increase our conversion rate beyond the baseline, but the agent is so good. It gives a warm and personalized experience to every lead it touches 24/7. It’s very impressive” Layla reflected

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By partnering with Konko AI, the company was able to maintain its growth trajectory while maintaining quality of customer interactions.