INTERVIEW
Charis: All of our real estate deals to date are successfully closed within a month from origination to distribution. Our success lies in our ability to originate, structure and distribute institutionalquality real estate investment deals, from the start to the end of the whole investment value chain. This capability is unique due to the synergistic partnership with ARA and a technologyenabled robust crowdfunding platform that offers every investor financial empowerment.
Given ARA’ s global presence in 28 countries, we will be able to access real estate products globally. Further, ARA has the local expertise and teams that will manage the assets professionally, so investors are assured that from start to end, the deal is institutionally-managed on their behalf.
Q
Can you talk about your technology and how crucial is getting the right type of tech for your kind of business?
Charis: Financial services is rapidly evolving with advances in technology and shifting customer expectations. That is why we always believe that technology has to support the business. The technology underpinning the business has to be purposeful. Customers are expecting frictionless, omni-channel and personalised experiences. As such, a smooth onboarding process is critical.
From our lenders’ perspective, we leverage on technology to make it very easy for our members to be onboarded, top up their e-wallets and to make an investment. Our investment process is seamless with an easy 3-click process to make an investment. Our youngest investor is 18 years old while our oldest investor is 82 years old. Similarly, our investor profile is highly diversified from retail investors all the way to UHNWI and family offices. Technology enables democratisation of investments where all can participate in any given offering.
Q
How did you curate your algorithm?
Charis: We have a credit algorithm that is tried and tested over time with thousands of borrowers who came through our platform. When it comes to evaluating the credit risk of a particular loan financing, we consider two main factors. One is the company’ s ability to pay, which can be gleaned from its latest financial records, cashflows, competitive positioning and payment track record.
The second is its willingness to pay. For this, we examine aspects such as a the strength of the promoter’ s personal guarantee, the promoter’ s background and his or her behavioral attributes.
How do you do due diligence on your investors and borrowers?
We perform credit checks on companies by pulling third-party information. These are independent authoritative reports. We also meet with our borrowers as part of the due diligence we do for our investors.
Q
What are your views on Proptech?
Charis: Proptech is still in a relatively nascent stage. It is quite common to find their application within the physical asset management domain. As some would describe, a building as a supercomputer with a roof. Today, technology is focused on collecting vital measurements of the building to ensure optimal maintenance and management.
Charis Liau
Increasingly user experience is being collected, which will provide a better understanding of the delicate relationship between the occupier and the building, something that was not possible before. With the advent of 5G, we can expect more of such information and data to transpire from the physical asset realm.
There is increasingly more Proptech focusing on new emerging areas investors should consider, i. e. through harnessing and integrating the intelligence of big social data with traditional economic and real estate information.
What that is still lagging is the understanding of a building’ s performance with its investment returns. The integration of these two compelling sets of information is something worth watching out for.
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