Posts by Raghu SA
Will OCEN be the UPI of lending?
The problem of universal access to credit seems elusive. The issues are all too familiar. Traditional players like banks and NBFCs still rely on old world methodologies (balance-sheets, collateral) with largely ‘one-size-fits-all’ credit products. These products follow a bank-centric design, and not a borrower-centric design. The fallouts are huge, as this traditional approach results in…
Continue ReadingThe API ecosystem
From being obscure technical components to helping create a whole ecosystem that is at the heart of nearly all commerce and business today, APIs have come a long way. We inhabit an app-dependent world, and those apps in turn depend on APIs – application programming interfaces. APIs are the magic glue that connects to integrate…
Continue ReadingTransforming digital lending through APIs
Platformable, a consulting firm that helps companies and public bodies generate value through the use of APIs, recently published stats on the status of Open Banking which gives interesting insights especially on regional variations as also the products in favour. Two facts stand out- growth in the European region (29%) was driven by the mandate…
Continue ReadingAccount Aggregators-not quite there yet
2016: RBI approves a new class of non-banking financial companies to function as Account Aggregators (AA) to extract, aggregate, and transfer financial data with the express consent of users. 2019: Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 (PDPB) introduced in the Indian parliament to provide the legal backbone for AAs. 2020: PDPB yet to come into force,…
Continue ReadingThe rise of Embedded Finance
Though embedded finance is gaining headspace today, it is not a new concept. The traction is due to the recent spike in interest shown by venture capitalists, private equity investors and fintech companies. The changing attitude among banking customers, even among the old, who are now willing to look at non-banking finance, added to the…
Continue ReadingWhy banks must warm up to APIs?
After enough has been written about the benefits of using APIs for banks, only one pertinent question remains: It now boils down to ‘When rather than Whether’ for API adoption by banks. In that pursuit, the biggest challenge seems to be – ‘how to monetize our API efforts?’ The simple answer is to figure out…
Continue ReadingWill the AI explain itself?
Will the AI explain itself? Though artificial intelligence has existed for decades, it has remained in the fringes for long, with few game-changing applications until today. That said, the current Covid-19 pandemic has moved the world towards embracing AI in as many ways as possible to compensate for the unprecedented restrictions. AI-based social distancing detection…
Continue ReadingSupply chain risks in banking
Supply chains- the value network consisting of sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing, outbound logistics, channels and demand management- took a massive beating from the pandemic. As COVID-19 related lockdowns overwhelmed country after country, firms and businesses experienced supply shocks in the forms of both disruptions to the availability of goods sourced from China as also…
Continue ReadingThe World of APIs
If you are using a travel site to book flight tickets or an entertainment app to book movie tickets or simply making payments through your mobile, you are using APIs- the technical name for programs that help software systems connect with one another and perform tasks by sharing information. Closer to home, a telling example…
Continue ReadingHow Digital lending is scaling up to the pandemic
Even as the most devastating crisis of our times plays out, banking and financial services continue to hog the limelight simply because they are needed to dispense cash, make payments and loans– thelifeblood of our economy even in normal times. While FinTech and digital lending have been around for many years now, they have been…
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