NEW DELHI: UK based fintech Wiserfunding announced its entry into India, launching its artificial intelligence (AI) backed cloud-based credit risk assessment tool targeted at small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Wiserfunding arrives at a time when SMEs across India are struggling due to the COVID-19 impact and the available models in the lending sector are not specific to SMEs, are largely non-technology based and have low prediction accuracy.
The London headquartered fintech company aims to invest around $5 million over the next three years to tailor credit risk models specifically towards Indian SMEs to reach an accuracy level above 80%. The investment will also be towards creating technology to connect to various public and private databases to source all inputs to fully automate its models as they already do in Europe.
The company plans to partner with three to four banks and eight to 10 NBFCs in India and cover 8.5 million Indian SMEs through its models by end of the financial year.
Edward Altman, creator of the Altman Z-score methodology for assessing the financial health of companies and co-founder, Wiserfunding said, “Our mission is to empower SME growth in India and there isn’t a better time than now. Typical to any economic shock, bank lending is expected to reduce for SMEs, making it more difficult for them to survive. It will be important to have a reliable and accurate assessment of businesses’ viability and technology will be central to such analysis. Indian banks and financial institutions will definitely see a significant benefit in using a more independent and unbiased risk assessment platform with the entry of AI powered models.”
This is Wiserfunding’s first international office outside Europe with Ms Avantika Goel, relocating from London to Mumbai, as the country head of India.