GoBear to Add Alternative Credit Scoring to User Journey
Personal finance comparison website GoBear and smartphone-based alternative credit scoring provider CredoLab have announced the launch of Easy Apply, a smartphone app that enables banks, financial institutions and lenders to extend credit to a larger pool of customers while keeping risks in check. The partnership signifies an important headway in making financial services accessible to more than 110M underbanked people in emerging Southeast Asian (SEA) markets.
The Easy Apply app will be launched across four of the largest underbanked markets in SEA – Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam – where around 65% to 75% of the population, of whom many are creditworthy consumers, are without access to credit.
The app will utilize CredoLab’s AI based proprietary algorithms that extract and analyze over tens of thousands of data points from applicants’ smartphones, turning these completely anonymized ‘digital footprints’ into predictive credit scorecards to be used in their credit card, loan or insurance applications. The use of non-traditional smartphone data for credit scoring provides applicants from all demographics – including the underbanked who have little to no traditional credit history – greater access to financial services such as credit cards, personal loans, and other forms of unsecured credit.
“There is a massive market opportunity here in Southeast Asia to continue improving financial inclusion by constantly innovating solutions. Our partnership with CredoLab will bridge the divide between the underbanked and financial institutions by giving both parties access to the right technology at the right moment to create better outcomes.” – CEO, GoBear, Adrian Chng.
“We are excited to be partnering with GoBear to help banks profitably serve their customers including the underbanked. Since our launch in 2016, through our use of non-traditional alternative data points, we have seen a significant drop in cost of risk, helped reduced the time-to-yes to a few seconds, and achieved almost 45% increase in approval rates. I am optimistic that we can achieve similar results through this partnership.” – Cofounder & CEO, CredoLab, Peter Barcak.
The Easy Apply app will be an integrated part of GoBear’s user journey. It begins with GoBear’s Easy Choices feature, which helps applicants understand which set of products better suit their profile, before downloading and installing the Easy Apply app onto their smartphones to generate their predictive digital scorecards.
Bottom Line: Easy Apply will kick-off with the credit cards segment and extend to personal loans, insurance products and other lines of credit in the near future.
