The story
Two votes for the big ones, one for the rest.
A customer asks for a loan. The client advisor collects and checks the documents in the CRM: income, existing obligations, the purpose. Credit analysis then assesses creditworthiness with a rating tool. So far the path is the same for every request. The first gateway asks whether this is a large loan. If not, credit analysis decides on its own. If it is, the request goes to an approver for a second vote: a separate person, in a separate lane, who looks at the case independently. That second vote is the control step, drawn in blue.
Both paths meet at the second gateway: approve or not. On yes, the advisor prepares the contract in the core banking system, the customer signs it, and the loan is disbursed. On no, credit analysis writes a decline with reasons, and the decline is sent.
Four lanes: the customer, who asks and signs; the client advisor, who checks documents and prepares the contract; credit analysis, who assesses and declines; and the approver, who casts the second vote. The two decisions sit with credit analysis, which is where the assessment lives.
This is a fictional example model. A real credit process would carry collateral valuation, pricing, conditions, the four-eyes rule in more than one place and a loop for missing documents. The example keeps one idea: a threshold that decides whether one vote is enough, and a clear point where the two routes rejoin.
The diagram
The model as BPMN 2.0.
The no branch of Large loan? runs straight along the credit analysis lane into the second gateway; the yes branch dips into the approver's lane for the second vote and comes back. A reader sees that the approver is touched only by large loans.
Elements used
What is in the model, and why.
Eleven nodes. One of them, the second vote, is the reason the model exists: it shows how a rule about amounts becomes a visible path.
Lanes: Customer, Client advisor, Credit analysis, Approver
Advisor and credit analysis are separate on purpose: the person who brings the business does not assess it. The approver has a lane of their own because the second vote must come from outside the first assessment.
Gateways: Large loan? and Approve?
The first gateway stands for a threshold the bank has set. The second is the actual decision. Keeping them apart means the threshold can change without redrawing the decision.
Control step: Second vote
The blue task in the approver's lane. It has no system under it: it is a person reading the case and recording a vote. The .bpmn file marks it as a control step in the documentation.
Systems: CRM, rating tool, core banking
Documents live in the CRM, the assessment in the rating tool, the contract in core banking. The names under the tasks show where data has to travel from one to the next.
End events: Loan disbursed, Decline sent
The disbursement ends with the customer, because that is where the money arrives. The decline ends with credit analysis, who writes it. Two end events keep the two outcomes apart.
Where the process waits
What to look at in a credit model.
A loan request waits in front of people, not systems. The model shows three such queues and one loop that is not drawn.
Documents arrive in pieces
Check documents is one task in the diagram and, in practice, a series of emails. The loop back to the customer is not drawn here; in a workshop it is the first thing people add.
The approver's desk
Large loans wait for the second vote. If the approver is one senior person, the queue is theirs. If the threshold is set low, the queue is long. The blue task is where both questions meet.
Reasons that reach the customer
A decline with reasons is written by credit analysis and read by the customer, with the advisor in between. Whether the reasons survive that hand-over is worth asking.
Signing takes its own time
Sign contract sits in the customer's lane. Printing, posting, signing, returning: the one step the bank does not control is often the slowest one in the model.
Request the file
The model as a .bpmn file.
The file is a fictional example model in BPMN 2.0 XML. It opens in standard BPMN tools such as Camunda Modeler, Signavio or ADONIS, with lanes, both gateways, the control step and the diagram layout. It is sent by email on request; nothing is downloaded from this page.
The onboarding that precedes a loan: KYC onboarding. How the analyses per step are documented: process documentation. Processes in banking as a whole: banking.