Quick decisions can be good but only if you have a full understanding of the information that is available to you and if you know that you can trust the information source. One example is limited documentation first and second mortgage loans. The whole limited doc program was originally developed to give better service to consumers and shorten a lengthy process for obtaining mortgages. Unfortunately these quick decisions have come back to haunt many financial institutions because they didn't really understand the risk. This risk can't be detected with typical underwriting tools because this risk was an external operational risk. Institutions trusted the source of information too much and didn't fully underwrite based upon the risk that it could be inaccurate.
Quick decision making can have be inherently more risky...it is just that the risk is different than credit risk. Yes, it eventually comes to credit risk but that was not the most important risk to mitigate in this situation. And quick decision making is not a "bad" goal either. However, there are several ways to improve the speed of decision making and not all of them bring an increased level of risk.
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