Access to finance and financial services in Africa is still not as hitch-free as it should be, considering the technological advancements made thus far. There are still plenty of complaints by customers about their inability to access the basic financial services.
Meet Lidya, Nigeria’s first purely digital bank. Lidya is seeking to tackle the pressing issues in the financial industry in Africa. By making use of technology, Lidya wants to help individuals open accounts, build credit profiles and access credit to grow their businesses and plan for their personal needs.
Lidya plans to offer for now, only unsecured business loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This loans will range between 500USD and 15,000USD. This loan will be made available to eligible customers within 72 hours of application and won’t require collateral or financial audits. The bank would use credit scoring algorithms and technology to judge a customer’s creditworthiness.
Lidya is the brainchild of Tunde Kehinde and Ercin Eksin and would be a purely digital bank with no branches.
Speaking on this, Tunde Kehinde, co-founder of Lidya said, “Lidya is our solution for the over 300 million consumers on the continent who have bank accounts but don’t have access to credit, trade finance and personal investing tools to grow their businesses and plan their futures. With 600 million mobile subscribers and close to 350 million people online in Africa today, it’s clear that digital banking and finance is the future for Africa. We aim to industrialize the risk assessment process and capitalize on the huge technological advancements in machine learning and related technologies to unlock relevant financial products for today’s young, mobile and entrepreneurial customer.”
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How can one access Lidya the digital bank? is it operational presently?
For now, the bank is not yet operational.
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i have intrest but what is the risk involf