Lessons from IREP’s foray into fintech

For any proponent of financial inclusion, India presents a combination of overwhelming challenges and immense opportunities. Remote communities and great distances tend to overshadow the lack of basic credit facilities and social restrictions that keep certain classes of individuals, like women, excluded from the financial mainstream. However, technology is carving out a new window of opportunity for masses of Indians, in the form of increasingly sophisticated fintech products. Their disruptive power lies in the speed and scale they bring to financial transactions, and modern NBFCs like IREP Credit Capital are demonstrating how they can revolutionize the very nature of rural credit in India.

A digital gateway

As a social impact-driven NBFC, IREP Credit Capital has strived to extend the advantages of credit products to marginalized rural Indian entrepreneurs through secured business loans. In order to overcome the absence of any formal credit structure and financial know-how among applicants, IREP Credit Capital has had to evolve its own processes. They quickly realized that technology was the key. Ingenious new fintech products have allowed IREP Credit Capital to streamline its business and bring greater transparency to its loan application process, while reducing the time and effort required to process a loan application.

The result is that IREP Credit Capital’s turnaround time on loan applications and disbursements has come down by a staggering 50%. The gains have primarily accrued from standardized analytics, a unified structure for logging in case details, and intuitive decision making. The company aims to reduce turnaround times by 70% compared to its erstwhile figures when they first forayed into this business, making the customer experience even more convenient. Another achievement of IREP Credit Capital’s fintech initiatives has been digitalized documentation and onboarding process for new customers, which further simplifies and accelerates a previously time-consuming process.

Building interactions

There are other ways too, in which IREP Credit Capital is leveraging technology to mobilize new customers. A case in point being the company’s rousing ‘Women Entrepreneurship Campaign’ on LinkedIn, where users were invited to share stories of inspiring female entrepreneurs. Not only did the campaign yield heartwarming stories of courage and success, it also served to encourage more women to avail business loans available under the scheme at up to 4% lower than IREP’s existing rates.

The story of IREP Credit Capital’s fintech initiatives is illustrative of the power of expansive thinking and commitment to financial inclusion. For now, the company has set a new benchmark in rural credit. And they will hope to press on their advantage with a new generation of fintech innovations and products.