Maha KhanImagine you have just completed a job and are owed money. Your client offers you a delayed payment option where instead of receiving $14,000 today, you will receive $20,000 in six months. Which option do you take?
Maha KhanThis case study explores one company’s experience developing psychometric tests as an alternative method for credit scoring and a microfinance institution's experience implementing it.
Maha KhanRichard is a smallholder maize farmer in Western Kenya. He used to borrow money from his family or friends to buy essential inputs to grow maize—seed, fertilizer, and equipment—because he couldn’t access a formal loan from a bank. Most banks consider him a high risk client because of his low-income and lack of credit history. Recently though, Richard obtained a $50 loan for his farming business. By processing and analyzing satellite imagery on his farmland and cropping cycle, in combination with other alternative data, a lending organization was able to assess his creditworthiness.
Maha KhanTwo agriculture FinTechs integrated satellite imagery into their business models and product offerings, illustrating the promise and limitations of big data in financial services.
Marissa DeanThis guest blog was jointly authored by Marissa Dean (FiDA) and Jake Kendall. Jake Kendall is the Director of the Digital Financial Services Lab (DFS Lab), an early-stage accelerator delivering innovative fintech solutions to the developing world.
Marissa DeanEvery minute of every day millions of users in Africa create digital data. This new data is creating opportunities for alternative “big data” to catalyze an expansion of financial services to low-income and hard to reach populations. FiDA’s Snapshot 9, “Best Practices in Big Data Analytics” and FiDA’s Focus Note, “Can Big Data Shape Financial
Marissa DeanWe share how FinTechs, telcos, and banks in East Africa are leveraging their extensive datasets and what the marketplace for this information looks like.
Marissa DeanThis “deep dive” provides details about leading organizations in the digital finance space with a focus on how they use data and analytics in their businesses.
Maha KhanSnapshot 9: “Best Practices in Big Data Analytics” is one of 16 learning themes designed to address a range of topics within the digital finance space. The FiDA Partnership synthesizes, and disseminates the digital finance community’s knowledge of each of these learning themes as “Snapshots” that cover client, institution, ecosystem, and impact level topics. The