PNC’s chief says consumer loan process too slow

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

William Demchak, CEO of PNC Financial Services Group, said Pittsburgh’s biggest bank needs to do a better job of providing loans and credit cards to consumers, calling PNC’s application and approval process cumbersome and slow.

“We can do better. We will do better,” he said during a Barclays investor conference in New York on Wednesday.

As an example, Mr. Demchak said that 20 percent of pre-qualified applicants for home equity loans “walked away from us because we haven’t kept up with today’s customer expectations for speed of delivery.” “I’m embarrassed,” he said. Other loan products — including auto loans, home mortgages and credit cards — have similar room to improve, he said.

“While we’ve done well in commercial lending, we’ve been operating below our potential on the consumer side,” he said.

With some 7.5 million retail customers, PNC has the opportunity to significantly grow its consumer loan business without having to lower its lending standards, he said.

The Pittsburgh-based banking giant will continue revamping its branch network, closing locations “where appropriate” and converting others to scaled-down versions that replace teller windows with advanced-function ATMs, Mr. Demchak said.

Currently, one in five PNC branches is using the new format. The long-term goal is to increase that ratio to 50 percent.

Mr. Demchak also told analysts that PNC has no need to grow through acquisitions. “We don’t need to be larger,” he said. “We have the ability to grow organically.”