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Anatomy of a Partnership
These partnerships can take many different forms, with banks and start-ups divvying up liabilities, operations, and even involving third parties. Here are two partnerships that are helping banks provide improved service offerings to unbanked or underbanked customers.
Axis Bank partnered with Suvidhaa Infoserve to offer small loans to customers without formal credit histories. Suvidhaa Infoserve is a digital payments and remittances company which offers customers the ability to pay utility bills online, recharge prepaid mobile credit, and send remittances. Through a partnership, Suvidhaa Infoserve shares its customer transaction data with Axis Bank. Axis Bank then analyzes this data in-house to assess creditworthiness. This partnership allows a customer to walk into one of the 80,000 Suvidhaa retailers in India and request a loan. Following their request, the customer receives a Visa debit card. Suvidhaa forwards the data on the applicant to Axis Bank. If the loan is approved, funds are disbursed onto the debit card within 24 hours of the initial request.
BBVA Bancomer partnered with Juntos to build the financial capability of its customers and increase savings balances. Juntos provides customer insights based on data analytics to banks, together with financial capability boosting SMS messages to customers. Through this partnership, Juntos receives anonymized customer data from BBVA Bancomer and then creates a two-way SMS conversation with low-income, often first time bank customers. This allows the customers to learn about banking services, ask questions, and build toward their goals while also receiving nudges and reminders about saving and account usage. Based on the information gathered during these two-way conversations, Juntos produces key insights on the lower-income customer segment to help BBVA Bancomer better understand their financial needs.
We are grateful to Vitas Argimon, a Credit Suisse Global Citizen, for his research on this topic.
Hear about how Fidelity Bank Ghana is utilizing innovative partnerships to reach underserved customers in the exclusive with Dr. William Derban, Head of Financial Inclusion for the bank.