Metro Bank Teams With Covecta to Bring AI to the Loan Life Cycle

Metro Bank has launched a partnership with Covecta, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for financial services.

The collaboration, announced Tuesday (March 18), will deploy Covecta’s third-party agentic AI solution across Metro’s corporate and commercial credit businesses.

That solution, the British lender said in a news release, will carry tasks across the loan life cycle “from lead acquisition to servicing,” helping shrink what might otherwise take hours of manual effort into minutes.

According to the release, Metro Bank and Covecta found that each completed task showed a 60-80% reduction in time, thus improving team efficiency, decision making and risk analysis.

Andy Veares, managing director of Metro’s corporate and commercial operations, said the AI capabilities will help that side of the business grow at a time when the bank is seeing a jump in new loan originations, which were up 71% last year.

“This AI solution frees up more time for our corporate and commercial banking experts to spend servicing our customers, which goes to the heart of our relationship banking ethos,” he said.

The partnership comes as executives in the financial industry are turning to AI to navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment and faster product development cycles, as PYMNTS wrote last week.

“In 2025, there is pretty much no compliance without AI, because compliance became exponentially harder,” said Alexander Statnikov, co-founder and CEO of Crosswise Risk Management. “Think about all the change management that happens with regulations. Now, states will be stepping in. How do you stay on top of it?”

It’s a similar situation with business product development cycles. “They got much faster. Rather than being a two-year cycle, it’s been a few weeks. Products are being shipped quicker,” Statnikov added. Factor in the complexity of banking as a service and handling of third-party risk management as areas to oversee, and “this makes AI a necessity for success of compliance.”

Meanwhile, research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that 72% of finance leaders are actively using AI in their operations, while nearly all banking boards have approved generative AI initiatives, showing a recognition of its strategic importance.

“Leaders view AI as a tool for efficiency and a way to create hyper-personalized customer experiences, a critical factor as 50% of retail banking consumers are not satisfied with their current banking options,” PYMNTS wrote. “This growing reliance on AI signifies a pivotal moment where banks must evolve or risk being overshadowed by nimble Big Tech competitors.”

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