Enabling Financial Inclusion in Asia: How Smartphones are Revamping the Traditional Credit Scoring Model

Historically, credit-lending favoured consumers in developed markets over those in less affluent emerging markets. This lack of ability to obtain a credit loan induced a vicious cycle; a lack of loans means consumers cannot build credit scores, in turn making it challenging to secure a loan. Fortunately, AI-enabled alternative credit scoring is upending this, creating opportunities for online lenders and fostering financial inclusion across the region.

- Peter Barcak

Research by the World Bank indicates more than a billion Asian consumers lack access to mainstream financial services and other corresponding benefits that come hand-in-hand with being ‘banked’. Saying that, with 51 per cent of Southeast Asian consumers being mobile-first Internet users, smartphones are transforming this. Mobile Internet use enables the creation of new instruments available to assess consumer creditworthiness, opening up access to debt capital markets.

Smartphones’ role in financial inclusion