Cassbana, which was founded in June of last year, uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide financial identities for underserved and unbanked consumers. Its technology and data, which can be accessed via an Android app, allows financial institutions and businesses to create innovative lending and financial support solutions by analysing consumer behaviour patterns.
The firm began with a pilot with one service provider in Cairo but has now enabled 10,000 loans in 14 locations, with a 1.6 percent default rate. Cassbana’s creator and CEO, Haitham Nassar, thinks the company is developing a behaviour-based scoring system and a smart data analysis scheme that will be the future of data-driven financial advice.
“By developing mobile technology and data science algorithms, Cassbana disrupts the way financial identities are being built within the modern financial sector. The main goal of Cassbana is to reach and penetrate underbanked segments in growing markets in MEA, through using alternative data, network behaviour and instant credit,” Nassar said.
“Globally, almost two-thirds of adults without an account at a financial institution said that they have too little money to use one. Over five billion people around the world own and use a mobile phone, while 1.7 billion adults have no access to financial services,” continued Nassar.
“One in five of them blame the fact they are unbanked on the inability to provide personal information, demonstrate a credit history or account for their financial behaviour. Banks and other financial institutions still rely on the collateral-based scoring system or KYC, and aren’t positioned to meet the capital needs of the underserved due to lack of financial data on these populations.”
As a result, 77 percent of Egypt’s 65 million people are unbanked and financially neglected. Cassbana is here to help you out.
“We enable individuals and businesses by giving them access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs, delivered in a responsible and sustainable way with a steady focus on the constant embedding of financial literacy at the heart of each offering, product and service,” Nassar said.
Cassbana, on the other hand, has ambitions beyond Egypt and wants to begin expanding into other Middle Eastern and African markets with comparable inclusion issues next year. The firm, which makes money from interest rates and is already profitable, is aware of its competition but feels it has an advantage.
“Fintech is a hot space now, and there is noise everywhere, so the challenge is always to keep your focus on your customers, not on the competition or noise,” Nassar added.
