CredoLab: Driving Better Credit Decisions with Machine Learning

CredoLab develops bank-grade digital scorecards for banks, consumer finance companies, auto lenders, online and mobile lenders, insurance companies, and retailers. Built on mobile device data and powered by AI, the company's machine learning algorithm yields secure and customized scorecards developed on the credit outcome data, boosting users Gini coefficient.

CredoLab analyses over 500,000 features from a user's smartphone, working in harmony with existing risk management processes and in compliance with local data privacy regulations to connect the dots that traditional credit scoring methods can't. It converts the data points into a single, powerful behavioural score that can help banks, lenders, insurers, retailers, aggregators, and other similar businesses make better credit decisions.

This is done with the help of its white label app, CredoApp. CredoApp collects a variety of metadata from smartphones in conjunction with traditional methods to create a digital footprint. This produces highly efficient scorecards with high predictiveness, even for new-to-bank customers, while simultaneously providing the flexibility to tailor for risk appetite. CredoApp's options for integrations are flexible. It can be used as a standalone solution or an SDK that can be seamlessly integrated into the lender's mobile app.

Key achievements for CredoLab till date have been:

•  Over 12M application downloads

•  49 clients including banks, consumer finance companies, and consumer lenders

•  It serves clients in 15 countries across multiple regions: SEA, China, India, Latin America, and Africa

•  500K engineered features

•  Powered more than USD 1 Billion in loans issued after analyzing about 1 trillion data points

Distinguished Leaders

Peter Barcak, Co-founder & CEO is an executive-level manager with 20+ years' experience in senior CF Risk Management roles working with BNP, Citibank, Intesa Sanpaolo Group, and Platinum Bank. He is a high-integrity, energetic leader known for his ability to envision and produce successful outcomes in complex situations.

Michele Tucci is the Chief Product Officer of CredoLab. An enthusiastic strategic thinker and business developer, Michele has 19 years of demonstrable track record of building and marketing online, mobile and offline payments products, consumer lending, cards, and FinTech solutions. Previously, he worked with Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, Capital One Bank, MasterCard and Telecom Italia Mobile.

Tarun Kumar Kalra is the SVP, Head of Global Sales. Tarun brings a diverse & unique blend of technology innovation and financial services expertise built over 19 years of experience with leading Technology companies like Cisco, Infosys, Mphasis (HP), HCL & Nucleus software. A global Sales executive with strong emphasis on business expansion, Tarun has worked closely with clients in the Financial services industry helping them stay relevant and agile in this digital era. A Financial markets enthusiast, Tarun has a Masters in International Finance from the London School of Economics in addition to an MBA in Finance from India.

Providing Unmatched Benefits

CredoApp caters to the needs of banks, lenders and insurers alike offering the following benefits that standout in the industry:

Lower Cost of Risk: Machine learning combined with digital footprint guarantees lower cost of risk

Faster Decisions: Radically improved Time-to-Yes: less than 1 minute, compared to days in manual process

New Market Expansion: Enables lending to new categories of clients, previously uncovered by existing credit tools

Remarkable Milestones

The company has achieved the following milestones in 2019 and is going even stronger this year.

•  Named one of the Top 20 Start-Ups by Singapore Business Review

•  Alumni of Plug and Play Fintech 2019 batch

•  Raised $1 Million from GoBear in Feb 2019

•  Partnered with Visa, Mambu, Microsoft and GoBear and entered the lead sourcing business

•  Increased presence in 15 countries with revenue generating clients

•  Expansion to India, Latin America and Africa

The Future of Credit Scoring with AI

In a recent article with us, Peter shared how he believes that credit is today moving away from being an art to being more of a science. It used to be based on how trustworthy a person was in the past, which other trustworthy people could vouch for them, and the art of reading a person based on no hard facts.

"With time, this evolved. We moved to a more quantitative way of giving loans. Credit bureaus flooded the market with numbers tagged to each person based on various data – sometimes accurate, sometimes not- available from different sources. The science behind credit was taking shape but was far from perfectly predicting the creditworthiness of the applicants. Lenders still rejected applicants based on redlining, and other prejudiced, subjective factors, he said".

"But today, things have changed. Every minute we take 2.3 million photos, we send 16 million text messages and 156 million emails. We place 154,200 calls on Skype and take 45,788 Uber rides. In the last two years alone, we generated 90% of the data in the world and we have left more digital footprints than ever before. That's a lot of data on me and you. Enough for anyone with access to the right algorithm to convert my digital footprint to a behavioral score that can predict exactly how trustworthy I am".

CredoLab is doing exactly that. The company uses machine learning algorithms to convert the metadata of the smartphone device of the applicant into a highly predictable, reliable, behavioral score. This gives the power to each and every individual who do not have the credit history, in the traditional sense, to fulfill any other personal aspiration of theirs.

"With the boom in technology using AI, we can now pull the plug on all the unfair vagueness that traditional credit scored was plagued with and open the credit industry to a wider pool of people who are just as creditworthy (if not more)", he stated.