FintechNews.Sg | RCBC Embarks on Digital KYC with LenddoEFL to Onboard Millions of Unbanked Filipinos

Originally posted on fintechnews.sg

PHILIPPINES (Fintechnews) October 22, 2019 – Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) has sealed a partnership with LenddoEFL for faster and more convenient financial account opening for Filipinos through an end-to-end digital verification and authentication solution.  To date, Know Your Customer (KYC) processes have always required a face-to-face or real-time online interview to onboard bank customers.

“With digital KYC, consumers, particularly those who are unbanked, can open deposit accounts, apply for loans online, take out new insurance policies, do money transfers, and pay more than 2,000 billers through RCBC’s DiskarTech virtual bank in less than five minutes, anytime, anywhere. This is simply commoditizing customer convenience in an era when consumers prefer to interact through online channels,” said executive vice president and chief innovation and inclusion officer Lito Villanueva.

Government regulator Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has been at the forefront in championing inclusive digital finance and digitalization through emerging regulations leveraging on technology. “Overcoming the barriers to digital connectivity will not only promote accessibility to digital financial products, but will allow innovators to improve the design, enhance security features, and drive down the cost of financial services,” in a speech delivered by BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno at the recent 2019 Financial Executives (FINEX) conference.

“This is a game-changer as we continue to adopt alternative digital verification to help push for a more secure, faster and reliable verification process to onboard more unbanked and underserved segments into the financial system, supporting BSP's mission of financial inclusion,” said Judith Dumapay, APAC Sales Director Philippines, LenddoEFL.

Based on the 2017 Financial Inclusion Survey, only 23% of Filipino adults have a formal account. Only 48% of adults save, but 7 in 10 savers keep their savings at home. Of the 22% of Filipino adults who avail loans, 4 in 10 do so through informal sources.

Replicating Psychometric Profiles Through Mobile Phone Data to Assess Credit Risk Abstract

The big mass of financially underserved individuals across the globe is receiving increasingly considerable attention and led to the development of innovative solutions allowing people to use their digital profiles and personality traits to increase their financial options. On one hand, individuals with little to no credit history are empowered to choose if and when to use their own digital data to access the financial services they need. On the other hand, financial institutions across emerging markets are able to predict risk using non-traditional data sources to maximize approvals, reduce risk and, finally, improve access to financial services. However, not all alternative data sources are obtainable for every market, and historical credit repayment information is not always available to facilitate the training or recalibration of credit risk models fed by a particular data source. 

The replication of psychometric profiles through mobile phone data shared by credit applicants enables credit risk assessment through either a psychometric or a mobile profile, alternatively without the constraint of repayment information availability, given the existence of loan performance data collected for any of these data sources for the same market. Using clustering techniques, well defined psychometric profiles are derived for individuals for whom loans were disbursed in Mexico, each associated with different credit risk levels. Afterwards, personality traits associated with these profiles, such as impulsiveness or extroversion, are replicated through phone usage data related to installed mobile applications, calendar events, call logs and phone contacts. Finally, psychometric clusters are rebuilt based on mobile phone traits. Risk sorting power of these traits is validated through loan repayment information available for a different group of credit risk applications in Mexico for whom Android data have been collected. 

In this study, it is shown that psychometric and Android data can be used alternatively to predict risk, based on specific personality traits, extending the value of alternative data for credit risk assessment to market with technological or time information access constraints. The research could open the other to a big set of non-explored solutions to keep improving access to credit reducing process friction and increasing user adoption. 

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South China Morning Post | Technology guides RCBC Bankard’s strategy for new clients

Originally posted on South China Morning.

Country Business Reports interviews and articles by Discovery Reports www.discoveryreports.com

More than an alternative payment method for cash, credit cards today function more as a multi-purpose card as many institutions incorporate incentives such as airline miles, dining credits, discounts and more. Understanding how credit cards need to be more relevant and more integrated to the lifestyles of users, RCBC Bankard is dedicated to developing cards that address their requirements.

Specialising in lending and payments facilitation, RCBC Bankard, the credit card arm of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC), is among the fastest-growing credit card brands in the Philippines. It steadily built its technological knowledge and capabilities to rapidly bring to market a curated portfolio of products and services.

The Philippine market is generally underserved. We want to issue five million credit cards in the Philippines in 10 years

Simon Calasanz, president and CEO

Available under major card association brands Visa, Mastercard, JCB and UnionPay, RCBC Bankard offers 11 co-brand credit cards, including tie-ups with AirAsia, MANGO and Phoenix Petroleum, among others.

“We regularly assess the transaction behaviour of customers to customise our offers for them. We tailor everything according to analytics,” says president and CEO Simon Calasanz.

As more consumers increasingly lead digital lifestyles, RCBC Bankard will be launching a mobile app by the end of this year. It also plans to increase customer touch points through text messaging and online messaging support.

To further advance its technological expertise, RCBC Bankard is actively partnering with financial technology firms to enhance and optimise its operations. In the past few years, RCBC Bankard has been working with Singapore-based fintech LenddoEFL, a market leader in alternative credit scoring and Filipino identity verification solutions, to speed up its digital transformation. RCBC Bankard and LenddoEFL effectively allow new-to-bank applicants to use their digital footprints to unlock access to financial services with the use of cloud-based solutions fully aligned with Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas requirements.

RCBC Bankard is bullish about becoming among the top credit card companies. “The Philippine market is generally underserved. We want to issue five million credit cards in the Philippines in 10 years,” Calasanz says.

www.rcbcbankard.com

How mobile data improve client engagement

For most people, the smartphone is an essential part of daily life. We carry it around wherever we go, and we spend an inordinate amount of time interacting with it throughout the day. As such, it’s no surprise that the smartphone reveals quite a lot about us. Your phone is a proxy for your personality.

In fact, smartphone data has established itself as an effective data sources for credit scoring. This has been especially valuable for the so-called thin-file segment, where applicants have little or no credit history nor other reliable sources of financial information.

However, as useful as smartphone data has been to the credit industry, there are many other use cases for this data source. In this article, we will explore how smartphone data was used to predict an individual’s need for health insurance. The following data was obtained through an engagement with a large insurer in Southeast Asia, who wanted to determine if their mobile app users that would be responsive to a health insurance offer.

Let’s now see theory in action!

Your phone contacts shows your organizational skills.

How contacts are labeled on a smartphone can be quite telling of your personality. When a new contact is added, there are many details you can fill-in. At a minimum, you have to complete the contact’s name and phone number. However, you can also add a number of other details, such as their email, company, address, and birthday. Having more than just names and phone numbers on your contact list indicate a higher degree of perfectionism and organization. Those traits are represented by those with a high level of awareness and attention, who want to have order and control over all the events of their lives. They plan for their future. That means that they are the ideal customer to offer an insurance product which allow them to minimize potential risks.

The chart below shows the percentage of population split by the percentage of completed contact information that they have in their phones and each group propensity  to acquire an insurance product. If it is considered that population with less than 30% of their contacts information completed as the group with lowest probability to buy, it is possible to affirm that people who complete more than 50% of their contacts’ details are more than 1.5 times likely to buy an insurance product compared to those who belong to the first group.

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Your phone calendar determines your daily schedule and priorities.

How you use your smartphone calendar is another good source of insight. For example, we can see how much time you spend in meetings versus how much time you spend in social events. The habit of scheduling upcoming activities is also an indicator of how organized you are and how well you plan. We have seen that people with these traits, as measured by calendar behavior, are in fact more likely to acquire an insurance product. This is most likely driven by their focus on planning for expected (and unexpected) events.

In the chart below, people were grouped according to the number of calendar events they scheduled.  The chart shows that there is a correlation between an individual’s propensity to buy an insurance product and the number of entries in his/ her phone calendar.

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Your mobile apps show personal interests.

Another interesting data category relates to the types of apps that you have installed on your smartphone. This is particularly insightful since your apps directly correspond to your hobbies, tastes, interests, etc. People who are keen on games usually have a lot of gaming apps installed. People who are interested in finance have apps related to banking, investments, and even blockchain. If someone has many apps related to sports, health, and healthy lifestyle, that person is likely to be someone who takes good care of himself and is a good prospect for an insurance product.

Going back to our insurance use case, the plot below shows that people with health apps installed are 30% more likely to respond to the insurance offer compared to someone without health apps.

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Statistics is the data not your personal information.

We should clarify that companies that use smartphone data are just interested in statistics and the insights you can infer from them. They are not interested in knowing the phone numbers of your family and friends nor the details of your mailing address. The focus is on statistics, predictions, and associations, as they are generated by complex machine learning algorithms. 

As a final note, mobile data should be used as a tool to reach more individuals in need of financial services while further enriching insights on clients, to be able to provide the appropriate products. Financial inclusion is lagging behind digital inclusion, where 1.7 billion individuals and SMEs are still unbanked while registered unique mobile subscribers is already at 5.1 billion. LenddoEFL has been working with mobile data as basis of scoring and predictive analytics for ten years. We have proven and deployed multiple models that help financial institutions with their credit and financial decisioning, at the same time allowing thin-file clients to use their mobile data to access life improving financial services.

Reference:

https://cybersecurityventures.com/how-many-internet-users-will-the-world-have-in-2022-and-in-2030/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/570389/philippines-mobile-phone-user-penetration/

https://www.gsma.com/r/mobileeconomy/

PRWeb.com | Oxfam & LenddoEFL Partner to Help Disaster-Hit Communities, Aligned with BSP Initiatives

A partnership between an international organization and FinTech company that aims to improve financial inclusion and digital finance economy in the Philippines.

LenddoEFL CEO Paolo Montessori (left) and Oxfam Philippines Country Director Maria Rosario Felizco (right) during a meeting with BSP Deputy Governor Chuchi Fonacier (center) on June 6, 2019.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (PRWEB) JUNE 06, 2019

A financial technology innovation will help more people from remote communities affected by disasters get faster and more convenient access to financial services.

The innovation is the result of a partnership between international development organization Oxfam, together with a licensed financial institution, and software company LenddoEFL, which aims to give financial inclusion support “to the poor, underserved, and unbanked” in line with the initiatives of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

Oxfam in the Philippines Country Director Maria Rosario Felizco expressed optimism that this partnership would not only provide more efficient registration disaster-affected populations and ensure financial inclusion, but also help boost local economies by increasing access to financial services such as micro-credit and weather-based insurance.

“We have seen how the innovative use of digital cash technologies has transformed the lives of Filipinos, particularly women from marginalized communities. In contributing to their economic empowerment, we also amplify efforts in fighting poverty and increasing resilience in the face of disasters and conflicts,” Felizco said.

At least 1,000 farmers from Cagayan province who were affected by Typhoon Ompong in 2018 have benefited from the electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) product, which is an alternative digital verification process to register unbanked and unserved people.

This means the registered farmers may now be able to access a wide-range of financial services, including savings accounts and loans from Philippine financial institutions, in line with regulations of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)

At least 1,000 farmers from Cagayan province who were affected by Typhoon Ompong in 2018 have benefited from the electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) product, which is an alternative digital verification process to register unbanked and unserved people.

This means the registered farmers may now be able to access a wide-range of financial services, including savings accounts and loans from Philippine financial institutions, in line with regulations of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

Currently, Know Your Customer regulations in the Philippine have always required face-to face or real-time online interviews to register new-to-card or new-to bank current account/savings account customers.

With this innovation, farmers will be verified faster and more conveniently from their mobile phone.

Oxfam Philippines Country Director, Maria Rosario Felizco sharing about their work in Cagayan region.

“With our end-to-end fully digital verification solution, we are able to prevent fraud, ensure Oxfam aligns with Bangko Sentral requirements and quickly and efficiently onboard beneficiaries at scale” said Paolo Montessori, CEO of LenddoEFL.

He added, “We are proud to partner with Oxfam and help Filipino communities that need urgent financial support. Providing a solution to help disaster-stricken Filipino communities get access to financial services at a lower cost, faster and more conveniently is a step further to LenddoEFL’s mission of financial inclusion.”

Data from BSP’s latest Financial Inclusion Survey show that 52.8 million, or 77.4 percent of adult Filipinos, remain unbanked. Of these, 60 percent cited not having enough money as a reason, while 18-percent of the respondents said they do not have the documents required to open an account.

The innovation will also aim to support communities frequented by typhoons in Eastern Samar, and those displaced by the armed conflict in Maguindanao, where Oxfam and its local partners currently implement humanitarian responses.

The initiative builds on the lessons learned from previous humanitarian cash transfer programs during Super Typhoon Yolanda and the Marawi crisis, which pioneered affordable digital financial services for poor communities in the Philippines.

Originally posted on PRWeb.com

Lendit.com | LenddoEFL one of Lendit Fintech Industry Award Finalist 2019

LenddoEFL is one of the finalists of Lendit Fintech 2019’s Excellence in Financial Inclusion award.

To see the complete list, go to Lendit website.

FintechNews.SG | 12 Companies Score SG$1.2 Mil at The Singapore Fintech Awards 2018

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) today awarded 12 FinTech companies a total of SG$1.2 million divided for 12 different companies at the Fintech Awards, which took place at the third Singapore FinTech Festival.

This time around, the awards featured a greater ASEAN representation, with a focus on financial inclusion,  spanning different business areas like credit-scoring, mobile security, anti-money laundering, and digital investment. The Fintech Awards, supported by PwC, recognises innovative FinTech solutions that have been implemented by FinTech companies, financial institutions and technology companies.

This year, 40 finalists were shortlisted from more than 280 global submissions including the companies who participated in the ASEAN PitchFest6. The winners were selected by a panel of 17 judges who represent a cross-section of international and local experts from the private and public sectors. The entries were evaluated based on four criteria: impact, practicality, interoperability, and uniqueness and creativity.

The panel of judges includes representatives from Accenture Technology, Allianz, AMTD Group, Credit Ease, DBS, Deloitte, GIC, Grammen Foundation India, HSBC, Insignia Venture Partners, Jungle Ventures, Mastercard, The Boston Consulting Group, The Disruptive Group, True Global Ventures, UOB and Vertex Ventures.

ASEAN Open Award

Top 3

First Place: LenddoEFL (Philippines)

The company wants to provide people access to powerful financial products without exorbitant costs, quickly and more conveniently by using AI and advanced analytics to bring together digital and behavioural data. This helps lenders serve the underbanked. LenddoEFL has provided credit scoring, verification and insights to 50+ financial institutions, serving over 7 million people.

To continue reading, click here.

MAS.gov.sg | Twelve innovative FinTech solutions recognised at the 2018 FinTech Awards

Singapore, 14 November 2018… The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) today awarded 12 FinTech companies a total of S$1.2 million at the FinTech Awards, which took place at the third Singapore FinTech Festival.

ASEAN Open Award

1st place – LenddoEFL (Philippines)

2nd place – SQREEM Technologies (Singapore) 

3rd place – Finantix Asia Pacific (Singapore) 

ASEAN SME Award

1st place – FinAccel Teknologi (Indonesia)

2nd place – Katipult (Thailand)

3rd place – MoneyMatch Transfer (Malaysia)

Singapore Founder Award

1st place – CCRManager

2nd place – Cynopsis Solutions

3rd place – Thin Margin

Global Award

1st place – Everspin (South Korea) 

2nd place – Naffa Innovations (India)

3rd place – Keychain (Japan)

APAC CIO Outlook | 8 AWS Do's and Don'ts Learned from 8 Years Scaling Across 20 Countries and 300 Serviers

Originally posted on APAC CIO Outlook website. Refer to this link to read full article.

by Howard Lince III, Director of Enginerring, LenddoEFL

At LenddoEFL, we work at the intersection of big data, machine learning, and financial inclusion in emerging markets. Each of these imply a level of server sophistication that would be cripplingly difficult without Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our mission is to provide one billion people access to powerful financial products at a lower cost, faster and more conveniently. We use AI and advanced analytics to bring together the best sources of digital and behavioral data to help lenders in emerging markets confidently serve underbanked people and small businesses. To date, we have provided credit scoring, verification and insights products to 50+ financial institutions, serving seven million people. We’ve been able to manage all of this with a team of three infrastructure engineers managing 300+ servers. Read full article.