TECH CAN ADDRESS LOOPHOLES OF TRADITIONAL CREDIT MODELS

Sandeep A, Co-Founder & CPO, Crediwatch, says that despite the tremendous progress it has made in recent years, FinTech’s disruptive power is yet to be fully exploited, especially in the credit risk sector

- Sunil Rajguru

How is the financial industry handling the absolute data explosion that has taken place in the last couple of years? There are also issues of security, data privacy and residency. Are we able to cope?

The Financial Technology industry has been on growth trajectory over the past few years because of a supportive environment by the RBI and government policies. Given the effort to digitize several information sources by the government has helped bring transparency on businesses, Fintechs have emerged to capitalize on this data explosion. Unfortunately, several Fintechs still look at becoming a data aggregator and add little or no value to the datasets itself–leading to increased efforts by the ultimate consumers. The real value-add, hence, is in bringing insights as a solution.

Another game changer was data protection bill that came in early this year, even though it might take a while for FinTech companies to adapt to the new data protection guidelines. A quick makeover won’t suffice; they must make continued efforts to build a robust privacy system for storing and processing of personal data. Despite the initial hiccups, however, the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 can be revolutionize FinTechs wherein they can derive immense value from free sharing of data between the customer and the service provider as a result of newfound end-user comfort due to the proposed bill.

In what ways can Artificial Intelligence-Machine Learning tools help the financial services industry? Can they reduce credit risk?