An analysis of the role of digitalization in optimizing the consumer credit granting process the case study: General Society Algeria

Abstract

This study analyzes the influence of digitalization on optimizing the consumer credit granting process at General Society Algeria through interviews, direct observation, document analysis, and chronometric measurements conducted across four pilot agencies. The objective was to evaluate how digitalization reduces processing delays and improves operational efficiency. The findings show significant improvements across all studied processes, with substantial reductions in processing time for both the Account Opening Process and the Consumer Credit Granting Process as digitalization progressed from the legacy model toward the projected Full Digital model. The largest gains were observed in CRM processing, ticket creation, and disbursement phases through automation and system integration. The mobile credit channel also achieved a marked reduction in processing time, confirming SGA as the only bank in Algeria currently offering consumer credit through a mobile application. The transformation further reduced manual interventions, increased automation, minimized dataentry errors, eliminated paper-based processing, and significantly improved operational productivity. The study also highlights the future role of artificial intelligence in credit scoring, intelligent document processing, and Back-Office automation, while identifying persistent technical, cultural, and regulatory limitations that still affect the achievement of a fully digital process. Detailed processing times and improvement rates are presented in the Results chapter.