JuanCredit is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to rate borrowers’ credit score and connect them to established lending institutions through an online lender marketplace

The Philippines is an interesting country to study. Just look at these numbers:

Population is over 103 million with a median age of 23 years old

The total number of households is 22.98 million, of which the average size is 4.4 persons

The labour force is 68 per cent of the total population.

The number of smartphone users are estimated to reach 33.3 million by the end of 2017

The mobile phone subscription penetration is 119 per cent of the population

Around 52 per cent of the population use the internet regularly

But for all the adaption to technology, there is one statistic that makes the country a lot more interesting to companies looking for a tough nut to crack: 80 per cent of households remain unbanked.

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Doing some quick math, that is around 80 million – of which over 54 million are economically active – not engaging the services of any of the over 600 banks present in the country. That means there are no credit histories, no ratings, and no financial profiles for a large chunk of the population, making it difficult for them to access financial services that require such information as proof of eligibility.

Enter JuanCredit, a solution to be launched by fintech startup Ayannah, in a bid to address the financial needs of the Philippines’ unbanked.

AI and data analytics

JuanCredit makes use of recently declassified technology developed originally to fight terrorism by the United States’s Intelligence Advanced Projects Activity (IARPA) to analyse data from various sources and create credit scores for users.

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It uses deep learning artificial intelligence technology to process mobile top ups, remittance transactions, bills payments transactions, and social media behaviour of the users to create financial profiles. The information will come from Ayannah’s extensive database, as well as data from its network of partners all over the Philippines.

A nationwide network of partners

In a country like the Philippines where geography plays a huge role in the adoption of solutions, JuanCredit will make use of a network of partners like bills payment companies, pawnshops, convenience stores, and even drug stores that are scattered over the archipelago.

Bayad Center, the largest payment company in the country, has already partnered with Ayannah to provide JuanCredit access to its 7 million transactions per month and a historical payment database of close to a billion transactions by more than 10 million unique customers accumulated over the past ten years. Ayannah will combine Bayad Center’s bills payment data with data from prepaid mobile top ups, remittance transactions, insurance premiums, and social media profile to create an accurate pattern of an unbanked person’s financial behavior.

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Set to be launched in May 2017, JuanCredit will be the first AI-powered risk-based credit scoring system for the unbanked in the Philippines and probably in all emerging markets. Ayannah aims to launch similar systems in other emerging markets in the next few quarters.



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Disclosure: This article is produced by the e27 content marketing team, sponsored by Gree.

Featured image credit: charlieedward / 123RF Stock Photo

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