Grihum Housing Finance speeds up the customer onboarding by 70%

Challenge

Consolidating a fragmented, costly IT landscape

Grihum Housing Finance, formerly Poonawalla Housing Finance, specializes in affordable housing finance. The distribution network of this leading non-bank financial company (NBFC) spans 208 branches across 18 states and Union Territories of India, and its solutions are tailored to semi-urban and peri-urban markets.

Following multiple acquisitions, Grihum inherited 10+ disconnected applications and two core system stacks to manage 50,000+ active loans. This created technical debt, high maintenance costs, and data silos that delayed new product launches. Loan origination was also largely manual, making it prone to inconsistencies, missed deviations, and complex matching processes. CIO Varun Guliani’s mandate was to modernize this landscape without business disruption or cost overruns. Grihum needed a unified, low-code platform to streamline end-to-end mortgage processes and serve India’s underserved Tier 2 and 3 markets with speed and scale.

Solution

Building a unified, scalable architecture

Grihum selected OutSystems as its AI-powered low-code platform to unify customer, employee and partner-facing systems. Working with TheDigiFac, an OutSystems partner, the team built reusable modules for onboarding, KYC, ticketing, and other common workflows — accelerating development and improving consistency. Agile sprints delivered key applications like loan origination, CRM, and partner portals within months. A dedicated Transformation Office tracked scope, quality, and change, aligning outcomes to Grihum’s digital-first roadmap.

Leveraging OutSystems Agent Workbench, Grihum also built an AI agent to identify technical property deviations during loan origination. By analyzing property reports against credit policy, the agent suggests appropriate deviation types and approving authorities, improving underwriting accuracy and reducing errors for enhanced operational efficiency.

Results

A scalable, paperless mortgage platform with zero cost overrun

In just 12 months, Grihum built India’s first fully digital mortgage ecosystem on OutSystems, combining the best of both worlds: buying a robust platform and building deep customisations tailored to business needs. Within this foundation, Grihum architected a lean yet powerful system: just 900 reusable core components now run end-to-end processes, from leap capture and customer onboarding, through loan application processing and disbursal, to servicing. Centralized portals for agents, partners, and customers have improved access and reduced turnaround times significantly. With this foundation, Grihum is now building for embedded finance and AI-led customer experiences.

The transformation delivered a significant business impact. Customer onboarding is now 70% faster.
Grihum also increased its project scope by 72% without increasing costs —delivering more functionality within the same budget and timeline. This was achieved by leveraging OutSystems’ reusability to expand features without proportionate rises in development effort or spend. The lender achieved 100% paperless operations across origination and servicing, cutting operational costs and improving turnaround times.

Application complexity was reduced by 60–70%, with just 900 components (Application Objects) compared to the 3,000–4,000 typically seen at peers, lowering maintenance overhead substantially. Loan approvals are now seamless, thanks to streamlined workflows and automated decision support, while manual errors in credit, legal and property underwriting deviations handling have dropped by 70% with the AI agent, strengthening compliance and risk assessment accuracy. The AI agent analyses property reports against credit policy, suggests appropriate deviation types, and routes cases to the right approving authorities, making underwriting faster, more accurate, and less resource-intensive.