Finance
Vanakkam! Śubhēcchā’ō! Namaste! – The language paradigm in India’s financial inclusion journey.
With every nook and corner of India embracing the digital way of banking, further catalyzed by a raging pandemic, an interesting fact emerges. A 2019 November survey by the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IMAI) and Nielsen reveals that, for the first time, rural India now has more Internet users than urban India. Although…
Continue ReadingWill 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 ReadingTogether is better: When banks meet fintechs
When the global economic crisis happened in 2008, there was a sustained narrative of how disruptive and innovative FinTech companies would soon render established banks obsolete. While there has been an undeniable bloom of a variety of extraordinary startups that added tremendous value to the world, the larger picture has been that the old behemoths…
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 ReadingIs cryptolending the future?
Remember a few years ago when Bitcoin was all the rage? Everyone thought it was the next big thing. From the obscure geeky past of Bitcoin in 2008, founded by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, the new currency moved through the hype cycle and grew from strength to strength. Bitcoin technology also gave rise to more…
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 ReadingThe Indian Banking Licenses Story
In today’s digital era, the Indian banking sector is considered one of the most evolved banking systems in the world. With healthy competition thriving between the public and the private sectors, the banking sector in India has a variety of players that work within the ambit of varying banking licenses and legal frameworks. To understand…
Continue ReadingLooking into Loan Restructuring
The impact of the pandemic-led nationwide lockdown on economic activity, especially in the lending sector has been immense. Everyone from small town lenders to multinational banks have been affected. As job losses and pay cuts started as early as March, the Reserve Bank of India announced a moratorium on loan repayments. In its financial-stability report,…
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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