FinovateFall 2016 / Lidya
Presenter Profile:
How they describe themselves: Lidya is Africa’s digital bank, increasing access to finance and credit across the continent. Brick and mortar banking in Africa is expensive to scale, lacks scalable risk assessment tools, and does not target the average consumer. Lidya will help the currently 330 million Africans using the Internet open a bank account in minutes, save, and access credit needed to plan for their families and businesses. Our team has extensive experience scaling consumer internet businesses and have built a world-class platform powered with proprietary algorithms to create access to finance across the African continent. Welcome to the future. Welcome to Lidya!
How they describe their product/innovation: Over 45 million SMEs in Africa do not have access to credit, resulting in a $200 billion credit gap for these businesses. Lack of retail focus and poor data to assess risk makes lending to SMEs almost impossible for traditional banks. Lidya’s first product is a receivables-based loan that will disburse credit to qualified customers in 72 hours vs. up to six months with a traditional bank. Over time, our credit scoring algorithm will build credit profiles for each Lidya SME, allowing them to access higher loan amounts and more affordable financing for good credit scores.
Product distribution strategy: Direct to Consumer (B2C), Direct to Business (B2B), through financial institutions
Contacts:
Bus. Dev.: Tunde Kehinde, tunde.kehinde@lidya.co
Press: Philip Peck, ppeck@bellpottinger.com