I don't have the answers. But, just because I'm not an MD doesn't mean I can't point out an obviously broken arm. This is a problem and it does need fixing.
At this point, it's reached the level of absurd. Not even a great author could have come up with a better storyline. This has reached the point of being surreal. If I weren't witnessing this, I'd have trouble believing it - it's that bad.
At this point, I'm having trouble thinking of something they haven't screwed up. This has more twists than a soap opera.
In France for example there's no SSN used by banks, there's no Credit score either. How do people get mortgages? Bank do their research, ask for your paystubs and other documents, it's simply due diligence.
Due diligence can take you pretty far, for instance for mortgages, probably the biggest loan a person needs in life: current mortgage fixed interest rate are around 1.3% - 1.8% for long duration[1]. You get this without the existence of a credit score. In 2008, there wasn't any wave of people loosing their home because their mortgage was approved too easily and they suddenly weren't able to pay back, so something must be done right.
As an other commenter mentions, you might not be able to get your mortgage approved in a minute on a smartphone app ... But who wants this anyways? In a house/car buying process, this isn't the most time consuming task anyways, and certainly not the one you should approach lightly.
It's true that in the US, opening Credit cards is much more common, but even there, I'm not sure why a couple weeks of wait is much of a big deal, the bank already takes one to 2 weeks to send you the credit card by mail.
[1] http://www.meilleurtaux.com/credit-immobilier/barometre-des-...
Edit: also, comparing nominal interest rates is meaningless, you have to compare the spread vs. the risk-free rate for the given currency.
I don't know how it works in France, but other countries have a "bad payer" database. You get added to it when you're behind with your payments, and get removed from it when you're no longer behind. All lenders check that database.
In many places, if you want to get a small, revolving line of credit it’s considered perfectly normal to spend weeks validating your identity, including one or more in-person visits by a financial official. Can you imagine doing this in modern America? The economy would shrink by whole percentage points overnight.
We’ve made a deal with the devil, and this is how we pay.
Maybe it's better, in the long term, to suffer that shrinkage? I'm absolutely not an economist, so I don't really know. Maybe we are in a credit bubble and it needs to pop?
Could we absorb the negative drop in the economy without there being riots in the street? Would it be better in the long run?
We've reduced those over here by figuring out how to batch-precompute most of the needed work, with a generally low error rate.