That’s what digitization and artificial intelligence are for in credit evaluation: they free up costs and bureaucratic barriers. Or APIs for open banking: they free up data for exchange and the development of custom integrated products. In one more step, at embedded finance: any business, in any sector, as a provider or channel of financial services.
Models such as that of “small fertilizers” but with stratospheric interests should be quickly extinguished before the great promise of fintech: reduce costs, distances, times, oligopolistic costs, information asymmetries.
It is not for less that the banks of India have just launched a national data aggregator to make the open banking a super lever of innovation and financial democratization, the next phase of fintech evolution. Alluding to this technological disruption, Amiyatosh Purnanandam, a finance professor at the University of Michigan, recalls that the banking business, in essence, is to solve information gaps between borrowers, savers and other market participants.
That is where the intersection between inclusion, education and financial health acquires its full meaning, beyond regulatory action. And hence the importance of a project like Finnsalud, a non-profit organization supported by the MetLife Foundation, which has Mexico as a pilot. The antecedent is the global surveys that the latter has been carrying out with Gallup: they set preventive spotlights on the collateral risks of the exponential increase in supply and triggered efforts to generate standards and measurement tools such as those of the Financial Health Network, to which was added the development of applied behavioral sciences.
With these experiences and local studies, Finnsalud arrived at a four-dimensional approach: being financially healthy means being able to plan and budget for day-to-day accounts; the same, but for long-term goals and life goals; be resilient in the face of ups and downs and emergencies; and autonomy and ability to make financial decisions. It seems obvious, but keeping it in mind makes all the difference in a public policy or financial product.
From that starting point, a clinic concept (diagnosis + treatment) was conceived that includes a WhatsApp API for savings and credit cooperatives to conduct surveys and interact with their members, with an algorithm to determine scores and recommend products, uses. correct, alert to risks or patterns of over-indebtedness.
There is a huge area of opportunity for innovation here. Something similar would be expected of fintechs, traditional banks and companies of all kinds that incorporate financial instruments, be they insurance or credit to sell trips or used cars: the focus on financial health from the conception of added value and onboarding to open an account.