Can Lenders Scale to the Mass Market Without Losing Control?

We see so many lenders get stuck in the same paradoxical situation: they're trying to expand their reach to the millions of underbanked or thin-file customers, but their own policies stand in the way.

For good reason. Governance structures designed for lending to prime, salaried borrowers shouldn't be recklessly expanded to serve borrowers with no credit history. That would be trying to serve a motorbike mechanic using the same credit policies built for a mid-career engineer with a mortgage. It doesn't work. Worst case: you lose control of your default rates. Best case: you're spared losses, but only by overly conservative policies that also block growth. In other words: you're stuck.

We recently helped a lender stuck in this situation. Despite strong early performance in their expanded population, they found themselves boxed in — internal policies limited marketing to a fraction of their user base, teams were hesitant to scale because of the old "rules" — and unsure how to safely grow out of the constraints. You can't grow without experimentation, and experimentation brings risk.

The answer is a “universe test”: a testing framework and controlled expansion strategy with clear risk bands, stress-tested economics, and fast feedback loops.

The results were transformative for this lender:

• A massive increase in addressable population (from 1 million to 8 million+).

• A 20x increase in loans originated—from 50,000 to 1 million in 9 months.

• A shift in internal mindset from fear to confidence.

• And the kicker: even under aggressive stress scenarios, the strategy remained profitable.

Too many institutions get paralyzed by the risk of failure. But in lending, not testing is the riskiest thing you can do. You'll end up stuck. To serve the mass market, you need to engineer ways to learn quickly, safely, and at scale. That’s where we specialize. We design growth strategies that respect your risk tolerance while unlocking your potential. And we roll up our sleeves to help you execute them.

Ready to scale with confidence? Let’s talk about building your next universe test.