In partnership with mobile operators, financial institutions and merchants, Juvo aims to build financial profiles for the 68% of adults worldwide who have no formal credit history
San Francisco, September 24th, 2019 – Juvo, a pioneer of financial identities for the underbanked, today unveils Financial Identity as a Service (FiDaaS). FiDaaS is a technology suite that builds financial identities by utilizing alternative data sources, along with incremental data generated from direct-to-consumer lending. These financial identities allow the 3.9 billion people[1] around the world without a credit history to qualify for financial services from financial institutions and merchants, often for the first time. Juvo’s FiDaaS platform currently updates 5.6 billion data points every single day for 200m consumers on four continents.
For billions of people around the globe, one of the biggest barriers to financial inclusion is credit. One-in-five adults[2] who are excluded from the financial system blame this on their inability to provide the necessary personal information. Not only are underbanked consumers unable to demonstrate a credit history, they are unable to account for their financial behavior at all. In turn, financial service providers cannot accurately calculate the risks attached to these new customers because of a lack of information about their past financial behavior. Their default answer is “no”.
While many adults have no formal credit history, 9 in 10 adults worldwide[3] use mobile telecom services. Although subscribers pay with cash, purchases of mobile services create a history of financial transactions that are recorded digitally and associated with a single person. Working with mobile operators, financial institutions and merchants, Juvo is able to access a wealth of alternative data in the form of everyday mobile transactions and interactions and use machine learning technology to establish financial identities. Over time, credit is extended and a potentially wider range of financial services are provided, creating a richer and more rounded financial profile.
FiDaaS helps:
- Consumers establish a credit history and access financial services, often for the first time
- Mobile operators maximize existing cash flows and open new revenue streams from data monetization and financial services
- Financial institutions expand the addressable market for financial services while minimizing risk
- Merchants serve more consumers as well as decrease abandoned and declined transactions
“There is huge inefficiency in the global economy because underbanked consumers lack a financial profile. Not only are individuals locked out of essential financial services, preventing families and businesses from dealing with unexpected emergencies and planning for long term goals, financial service providers are unable to serve credit worthy customers,” said Steve Polsky, Founder and CEO, Juvo. “FiDaaS is designed to underpin a new global credit infrastructure to include those that have been financially excluded but use a mobile phone. In tandem with our operator, bank and retail partners, we are determined to solve the credit conundrum and set a path to financial health.”
“Getting started is one of the biggest challenges for consumers seeking to join the formal financial economy. FiDaaS allows financial services providers to be able to trust emerging customers they know little to nothing about,” said Ron Suber, President Emeritus at Prosper and Juvo advisory board member. “The promise of fintech is to better connect consumers and financial institutions to make transactions more efficient and ubiquitous. Juvo is moving these ambitions a major step forward with FiDaaS.”
Juvo utilizes global cloud infrastructure and technologies such as Lambda architecture that enable FiDaaS to ingest and structure both real-time and batch data at scale. These data points help to close the information gap that prevents institutions from trusting creditworthy consumers, purely due to insufficient data.
For more information on our Financial Identity as a Service technology suite, please download the full whitepaper here: www.juvo.com/fidaas.
Sources:
[1] World Bank, 2018
[2] World Bank, 2018
[3] GSMA, 2018