The form asked for a monthly salary. For an employee receiving a stable payment, that could be a useful starting point. For some self-employed applicants in our 2025 trial, it was a poor description of the evidence they could supply. Among eighty-four applications reviewed, twenty-nine could not accurately fit their circumstances into the required constant amount. Some had seasonal business receipts, others drew funds unevenly and some needed to explain relevant costs before an income figure could be assessed. The field offered them a simple box at the cost of a distorted account.
The immediate design response was to add a free-text explanation. That would have allowed applicants to say more without changing the ordinary route, but it would not necessarily give underwriters usable evidence. A narrative detached from the supporting period and documents can still leave the receiving team to reconstruct the account. I wanted the product to preserve the circumstances the professional assessment needed, rather than make the form easier to submit while moving the unfinished work to somebody else.
Distinguish a different circumstance from a lower standard
The finding did not establish that the twenty-nine applicants qualified for loans. It showed that the product was poorly suited to representing their circumstances. Credit owners retained the assessment of income, affordability, eligibility and terms. My team could not solve a difficult application by choosing a favourable average or treating a new form as permission to relax the required evidence. The task was to make a different route capable of supporting the same responsible professional judgement.
We worked with underwriters on a twelve-month evidence calendar and an assisted path. The calendar helped organise the period and material they needed to examine. It did not convert every business receipt into personal income or calculate an entitlement to borrow from a simple annual total. The distinctions belonged in the product because a person using the form should not be encouraged to make an unsupported claim merely to satisfy a required field. The authorised assessment remained downstream of a usable record.
Some delivery colleagues worried that the change would make the product more complex for everybody. That was a real design concern. We did not need to force every applicant through the longest route. We needed a clear way to identify and support the circumstances for which the ordinary field was inadequate. A product can have more than one path without making the underlying decision arbitrary. The difference should follow the evidence required, with an understandable transition when a person's situation does not fit the first route.
The distinction between representation and approval also helped us communicate the change internally. The commercial team could legitimately want fewer applicants stalled by the form. It could not count every newly completed file as a new loan. Underwriting colleagues could support a better evidence model without being asked to endorse the applications in advance. Product leadership needed to keep those outcomes separate so each team could contribute without having its support interpreted as agreement to a wider claim.
Design the evidence route with its receiving team
The programme cost ₹42 lakh and added nine weeks to the work. The operating plan also included two underwriting-support analysts at ₹14 lakh annual expense. We kept that recurring amount separate from the one-off product programme. The assisted route required people who could help organise the evidence and explain what remained missing, within the responsible team's authority. Calling it an exception would not make that work disappear or give it a budget.
I wanted the receiving team involved before the new path was declared complete. A form can collect more material and still make assessment harder if its structure does not match the decisions underwriters need to make. Equally, asking applicants for every possible document without explaining the purpose can create avoidable burden. The work was to define a proportionate, usable evidence route with the professional owners, including how an incomplete record would be returned for further material rather than silently treated as sufficient.
Assistance also needed clear limits. Supporting a customer to provide an accurate record is different from supplying an answer that makes the application look stronger. Staff should help the person understand what is being requested and preserve the actual circumstances. The design should not reward a neat-looking monthly number when the evidence describes variation. I wanted the product account to make accuracy easier, including when the result was that a file remained incomplete or did not support the desired borrowing.
The longer implementation period affected other priorities. We retained that trade-off in the decision instead of presenting the route as an effortless inclusion improvement. A service can be worthwhile and still require additional cost and operating discipline. The question was whether the company was prepared to support the applicants it intended to serve with a product that represented their evidence honestly. A shorter form was not a meaningful advantage if it achieved its simplicity by asking some people to misdescribe their income.
Report what the completed file actually establishes
Nineteen of the twenty-nine applicants completed the required evidence route during the reviewed period. Ten still needed further material. The complete files could proceed to the appropriate assessment. We did not call them approved loans, disbursements or evidence of future repayment performance. The wider trial population remained eighty-four. Those denominators mattered because an encouraging account could otherwise drift from a specific improvement in evidence collection into a much broader commercial claim.
The ten unfinished files also remained in the product review. Their presence did not automatically mean the redesign had failed, nor did it mean their circumstances should be forced into the ordinary route. We needed to understand what remained missing, whether the request was clear and what assistance was appropriate. Some files may never become adequate for the proposed borrowing. A responsible product should be able to report that outcome without treating every incomplete journey as a defect that must be removed to improve completion statistics.
For directors, I would frame the case as a question about whether management's product measures correspond to the task the company is actually trying to support. Does completion mean a form was submitted, evidence became assessable or a lending decision was made? What work and cost sit between those events? A board can ask for that clarity without reviewing an individual's application. It can also examine whether the product encourages an accurate account or quietly rewards a convenient representation that the business then mistakes for evidence.
The lesson is not that every form should be longer or that irregular income should receive a particular lending decision. It is that the evidence model must fit the circumstances the service claims to support. I now involve the receiving professional team and the assistance capacity earlier. The product should give an applicant a truthful route to the next decision, while leaving that decision with the people authorised and equipped to make it.