New Delhi, Dec 9 (PTI) FinBox has facilitated real-time assessment of millions of borrowers and helped disburse over Rs 10,000 crore through its suite of products, says Rajat Deshpande, CEO and co-founder of the credit intelligence and infrastructure platform.
“Our focus for the foreseeable future will remain on building next-gen lending infrastructure for banks and enterprises. Eventually, we are looking to solve the supply chain financing issue and work with conglomerates to improve credit availability. AWS is our cloud provider of choice in realising this vision,” Deshpande told PTI.
"When it comes to the bigger picture, we aim to become the ‘backbone’ that will be used to create fintech experiences across India and the Asia Pacific," he said.
The fintech startup, backed by marquee names such as A91 Partners, Aditya Birla Ventures and Flipkart Ventures, has set its sights on strong revenue growth and is aiming to do USD 1 billion-plus in originations.
FinBox is leveraging new-age technologies. Its tech stack is powered by AWS technologies around compute, databases, storage, serverless, and machine learning to power the AI/ML driven underwriting suite. “This eliminates fraud early and helps lower interest rates for the borrower; while predictive analytics automates decision-making and prevents delinquencies,” said Deshpande.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: What is the vision and mission behind FinBox?
A: FinBox was born out of our desire to boost financial inclusion through hard-to-resist innovative and inclusive technology solutions to solve some of the most complex problems in the financial services industry.
Today, we have helped assess millions of borrowers and helped disburse more than Rs 10,000 crore through our products.
Our product suite in Underwriting category includes DeviceConnect, BankConnect + Account Aggregator, CollectX, BureauConnect, FinBox Data Platform powered by AWS.
While DeviceConnect' is an in-device, alternate data-based risk engine that supercharges risk assessment and brings down credit losses, theBankConnect + Account Aggregator' is our automated bank statement analyser which analyses bank data and financial statements to detect fraud and offer insights on borrower salaries, obligations, recurring expenses and more. It comes integrated with the Account Aggregator.
CollectX' is an early-warning and intelligence system for digitally acquired loan portfolios, whereasBureauConnect' fetches borrower data from one or multiple bureaus for enriched underwriting, offering insights in a uniform format for precise risk assessment.
The FinBox Data Platform' comes preconfigured with our data products. It covers bureau and alternate data sources to enable real-time intelligent underwriting for loan applications.<br> When it comes to credit infrastructure our offerings include No-code credit stack, DSA (direct selling agents) management, and Sentinel.<br> No-code credit stack' helps clients offer in-context loans to their customers, right at the point of need, while DSA management', an intuitive management system helps clients maximise DSA performance.<br> Sentinel' is the business rules engine that helps clients define, manage, and execute business rules based on real-time analytics, without touching the code.
Q: How is FinBox differentiating its offerings in the credit infrastructure space?
A: FinBox enjoys a great deal of traction and inherent demand among clients. It is due to our core proposition that we solve the most complex parts of the lending value chain.
That, along with our breadth of products, ensures we do have a lot of demand among both traditional and new-age financial services companies.
Our differentiator is that we solve the most complex parts of the lending value chain - right from prequalification to collections - and bring them together on a low-code platform.
Our platform simplifies lending by handling all compliance integrations, risk management, and lender integrations.
Q: What rate of growth are you targeting for FinBox in the coming one-two years? Could you also elaborate on your expansion plans for future?
A: Our focus for the foreseeable future will remain on building next-gen lending infrastructure for banks and enterprises. Eventually, we are looking to solve the supply chain financing issue and work with conglomerates to improve credit availability. AWS is our cloud provider of choice in realising this vision.
When it comes to the bigger picture, we aim to become the ‘backbone’ that will be used to create fintech experiences across India and the Asia Pacific.
As a business, we are looking to grow our revenues and aiming to do USD 1 billion-plus in originations.
Q: How has FinBox performed on various metrics in terms of revenue, users, usage etc?
A: FinBox has more than six dozen clients across India, Vietnam and Southeast Asia. We have more than 20 million API (application programming interface) calls on data products every month.
More than 100 million loans are disbursed through FinBox products every year.
Q: Can you give some examples of how offerings of FinBox provide convenience to clients?
A: Our products have helped improve business metrics for clients across the board. They work to improve underwriting by 40 per cent and collection efficiency by 50 per cent, and enable them to lower cost per loan by 55 per cent. It has lead to increase in approval rates by 150 per cent, lower risk by 35 per cent, and lower delinquency by 22 per cent.
A case in point is `Sentinel', our latest product. It is a no-code business rules engine which functions as the brain of all lending operations.
It is a crucial tool in the hands of lending teams across banks, NBFCs and fintechs that use it to frame policies, workflows and credit products.
It helps them lend more, lend faster and lend better in fully digital journeys without having to write a single line of code.
Q: What is the infrastructure and technology driving your overall operations?
A: FinBox connects hubs of demand creation to lenders through new-age technologies via innovative APIs. This tech stack can take care of the entire lending value chain, that is origination, customer onboarding, underwriting, KYC (know your customer) and collections.
The tech stack leverages AWS lambda. There are two parts to our business - the first is credit intelligence. The second is infrastructure, which consists of the loan origination system, embedded finance, among others.
And our entire stack is built on customisable and scalable APIs and SDKs (software development kits), which are built using AWS services.
All the core products are developed in-house apart from the ones that are commercially available like Bureau check, WhatsApp APIs, SMS APIs etc.
Q: How are new-age technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and big data shaping the FinBox offerings?
A: We are already leveraging new-age technologies such as AI, ML, and big data across our products. Our tech stack comprises an AI and ML-driven underwriting suite that eliminates fraud early and helps lower interest rates for the borrower; predictive analytics that automates decision making, predicts and prevents delinquencies, and reduces drop-offs.
Our tech stack also includes big data capabilities that evolve at scale for each contextual use-case and deliver insights that come from deep learning on 10 million new-to-credit (NTC) personas.
We are constantly innovating in order to utilise technology to optimise every stage of the credit value chain.
(This story has been produced by PTI in collaboration with Amazon Web Services).