Moneylending is one of the cornerstones of the global economy, with the concept almost as old as currency itself. With the advent of digital technology, the scope of lending has widened to include non-traditional sources and customers, with services like micro-credit, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and e-credit being made available across the globe.
Fintech firm LendFoundry, one of the participants at Singapore 2019 Fintech festival, is one of the pioneers in creating the modern process of borrowing and lending money. Utilising big data analysis, intuitive technology and algorithms, it offers various solutions to increase the efficiency of lending services, catering to loan businesses in the cyber sector.
Connected to India caught up with the LendFoundry CEO Sandeep Phophaliya at the India Pavillion of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019. Sandeep talks about the explosive growth of the fintech industry in India and Southeast Asia, the changing landscape of lending services and the challenges they face in the digital age.
He has every reason to be gung-ho considering companies in Singapore alone raised USD 735 million in the first nine months of 2019.
The current lending process has many challenges, said Sandeep Phophaliya, LendFoundry CEO, including long lead time from application to funding, a frustrating experience for borrowers and high costs.
“LendFoundry solves all these challenges by providing a highly efficient user experience as it allows our customers (lenders) to now ask for very limited details from a borrower and instead rely on various third parties we integrate with to get data digitally and in real-time,” said Phophaliya.
LendFoundry, along with a growing list of competitors such as Clust, Reach Loan Management and CloudNBFC focus on developing tools that will streamline the moneylending process by providing their customers’ instant access to the relevant data of borrowers available through outside parties, rather than have them gather the data case-by-case.
“This helps the lenders reduce the lead time in deciding on a loan while also reducing their operational costs by almost 50% and in the process also makes the customer experience far more engaging and positive,” he added.
With experience in tech behemoth IBM Global Services and experience in co-founding software services company Sigma Infosolutions in 2004, Phophaliya saw an opportunity to make an impact in the lending sector by bringing in technology-based transformation for lenders.
LendFoundry was launched after a considerable amount of work with leading fintechs and financial services companies in the US and rolled out their solutions for the India market two years ago.
“We see significant traction for our solutions in markets like the US, India, Singapore, Philipines, Vietnam, Africa. We have two partners in Singapore and thus will like to possibly consider setting up something in Singapore in 12 to 18 months from now,” he said.
Looking at the future of the loan industry in India and Southeast Asia, the LendFoundry CEO predicts that it will expand manifold and become even more specialised, and his company is at the cutting edge of providers of increasingly specialised lending services and tools.
“Companies are rolling out specialised products and thus the traditional classification of personal loan, business loan, home loan will get redefined and will be replaced by much more niche products,” he said.