Fintechs, too, have been doing some wonderful work using the internet and technology to make it easier to borrow, lend and learn. CreditVidya, a B2B player, helps lenders and wallets assess risk.

In comparison to traditional scorecards approach, RL (reinforcement learning) provides a robust and faster solution. This does not require any strategy shift as you have to just plug out the traditional methods and plug in the RL and AI-based solutions,” Abhishek Agarwal, co-founder and CEO, CreditVidya told TechCircle.

I realised the need for an alternative credit assessment mechanism for new to credit customers when I myself got rejected for a consumer durables loan at Croma. While the market was open and opportunities were huge, there was a trade-off that was needed to be done.” Abhishek Agarwal, co-founder and CEO, Credit Vidya.

One of the winners of the FE Best Banks Award this year, CreditVidya, helps lenders assess risk by using artificial intelligence to analyse various data such as the cash-flow ones. Once this catches on, not only are the fintechs in a position to drive the business to various banks—or away from some—significant chunks of bank lending can go to non-banks.

Private sector lender RBL Bank has partnered with alternative-data based lending platform CreditVidya, to instantly verify the employment details of salaried individuals, consequently reducing the turnaround time for credit assessments.

PNB Housing Finance has partnered with fintech startup CreditVidya which provides alternate data credit underwriting solutions to more than 25 leading financial institutions. This collaboration will enable PNB Housing Finance to perform employment email verifications digitally for salaried individuals, thus providing a seamless consumer experience.

CreditVidya is proud to receive ISO 27001 certification. This reflects the concerted effort on the part of the firm to raise the bar for data security and data privacy within the fintech industry. CreditVidya’s security and data privacy policy is built on the pillars of Security by design, Consent-driven access and Adherence to the highest standards and best practices in data management.

As profitability eludes the payments space, venture-capital funds are increasingly focusing on digital-lending platforms. If Accel is placing diverse bets, Matrix is trying to turn its fintech portfolios to lending companies and Chiratae is making up for the lost time by pumping in money. Stay put to know where the loan quest takes these VCs in the years to come.

The shift in the assessment from traditional credit scores to assessment of “digital footprints” has enabled access to institutional credit to the hundreds of millions of underserved, thus transforming the retail credit landscape. Alternative data collected from an individual’s digital presence is now facilitating the issuance of small ticket-size loans.

With digital footprints deepening further and deep learning algorithms constantly improving, alternative data-based lending has the potential to transform the retail credit ecosystem in the country, which is growing at approximately, which is growing at approximately 15 percent annually.

CreditVidya’s mission is to tackle the huge socio-economic problem of lack of access to affordable credit. In India and several other emerging economies, credit bureau data is scanty or absent for most of the workforce. As a result, most people are either unable to access much-needed credit, or are forced to rely on expensive, informal sources.