FINANCIAL technology (fintech) firm UBX Philippines Corp. announced it has tapped Singapore-headquartered Aboitiz Data Innovation Pte. Ltd. (ADI) to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology for UBX’s lending platform.
The agreement calls for ADI to provide UBX with AI solutions that will improve the credit scoring capabilities of the platform, which provides access to business financing for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
“We are leveraging their AI capability to help us score credit risks for unbanked and underbanked Filipinos and more importantly for the MSME segment of the economy,” UBX President John Januszczak said on the sidelines of the agreement’s signing. “There’s been a lot of digitally-based lending for consumers and we can do more. But the MSME segment we identified that a few years ago as a big opening as they are very underserved.”
ADI utilizes alternative data to help determine the credit score of borrowers. This can help hasten the process of extending loans as well as provide borrowers with “better rates.”
UBX’s lending platform called “SeekCap” can use ADI’s credit scoring platform to retrieve credit scores of borrowers and share them with SeekCap partner lenders, in accordance with data privacy laws.
“With your consent, that can be funneled to other lenders—that’s the other big thing. Connecting borrowers to the lenders is kind of the mechanics of it, but the fundamental underlying principle of open finance is if you can make the data accessible to all the data belongs to the consumer, not the institution that holds it or collects it,” Januszczak said.
SeekCap is touted as the Philippines’ first same-day approval digital lending marketplace. The platform processed over P14 billion of business loans in 2022 from more than 65,000 MSMEs, according to UBX. Lorenz S. Marasigan