10x Banking and ezbob Partner to Slash SME Lending Launch Times for Banks

10x Banking and ezbob have partnered to bridge the digital experience gap in SME lending by integrating ezbob’s orchestration platform with 10x’s modular core. For fintech professionals, this represents a shift toward "best-of-breed" stacks that allow tier-one institutions to deploy complex commercial lending products in weeks rather than months.

What was announced

The partnership combines ezbob’s lending-orchestration technology with the 10x modular core and ledger. This integrated solution is designed to help banks launch SME lending products with significantly reduced risk and accelerated go-to-market timelines. While many incumbent banks have successfully automated retail journeys like personal loans, SME lending has remained a challenge due to the complexity of business onboarding and credit decisioning.

Under the agreement, ezbob provides the end-to-end lending solution, which includes orchestrating the onboarding process, application handling, credit decisioning, and the use of AI agents. 10x Banking provides the underlying modular core and ledger capabilities, acting as the accurate financial system of record for the lending products. The architecture relies on open integration, allowing banks to connect specialist components without being locked into a single closed software suite. This modularity means components can be reused for subsequent lending products, preventing the creation of new operational silos.

The collaboration initially targets the UK market, where SMEs represent 99.9% of all private businesses. Data from ezbob indicates that lending products built on its platform have gone live in as little as six weeks. Furthermore, the platform has enabled over 90% of applicants to complete their applications in under five minutes, with 94% of approvals being fully automated. The companies intend to expand this partnership globally, targeting additional markets and lending lines in the future.

"Banks are too often asked to choose between a broad suite that is difficult to adapt and a collection of point solutions that never quite connect. Neither gets a lender to market quickly. Bringing our core and ledger together with a specialist origination platform gives them a faster, lower-risk route to market, and the flexibility to keep evolving it afterwards. SME lending is where customers can get the most value, which is why we are starting there."

Okan Ozaltin, Chief Product & Technology Officer, 10x Banking

The companies involved

10x Banking is a 4th-generation core banking platform founded to transform how major financial institutions operate. The company’s technology powers some of the world’s largest banks, including Westpac in Australia and Chase UK. By providing a cloud-native, modular ledger, 10x enables banks to move away from rigid legacy systems that often hinder the speed of product innovation. The firm has established itself as a significant player in the core banking replacement market, focusing on high-scale, tier-one deployments.

ezbob is a specialist lending technology company that focuses on digitising the entire lending journey rather than simply layering automation over existing internal processes. The company has a track record of working with major UK institutions, including NatWest and Metro Bank. Its platform is designed to handle the specific complexities of business lending, such as multi-layered credit decisioning and complex onboarding requirements, which are often underserved by standard retail banking software. Together, the two companies provide a combined stack that addresses both the front-end orchestration and the back-end financial record-keeping required for modern commercial lending.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has followed the expansion of 10x Banking closely, recently reporting on how 10x Banking Enters Embedded Finance with Tungsten Automation's Pay+ Integration. This move into embedded finance followed a major technical milestone earlier in the year when 10x Banking Celebrates 100th Release and Version 10.0 Milestone, signaling the maturity of its cloud-native platform.

The company has also been active in enhancing its migration and international capabilities. In March, 10x Banking Partners With Validata to Redefine Digital Banking Data Migration With AI‑Driven Speed and Accuracy, addressing one of the primary hurdles in core banking replacement. Additionally, the firm has sought to expand its geographic footprint, as seen when 10x Banking and HassemPrag Join Forces to Drive Next-Gen Banking Innovation Across Africa.

What this means

This partnership highlights a growing trend in the vendor landscape: the decline of the "all-in-one" banking suite in favour of integrated specialist stacks. For too long, SME lending has been the "final frontier" of digital transformation because it is too complex for simple retail tools but too small to justify the manual overhead of corporate banking. By pre-integrating an orchestration layer with a modern ledger, 10x and ezbob are putting pressure on legacy core providers who struggle to offer the same speed to market. The real test for the sector will be whether incumbent banks can overcome internal cultural resistance to modularity to actually deploy these "six-week" solutions.