Social Lender
Over 50% of Adult Africans lack access to formal credit.
Social Lender helps financial institutions offer Microcredit Based on Social Reputation to individuals who are unbanked, underbanked or have little or no access to formal credit. Social Lender is a lending solution based on social reputation on mobile, online and social communities platforms.
Social Lender is designed to bridge the gap of immediate fund access for people with limited access to formal credit. By giving access to the unbanked and underbanked, we unlocked economic capital which contributes to the general economy growth.
Over 50% of adult Africans lack access to formal credit. Sub Saharan Africa faces a dual problem when it comes to access to credit. First, there is an absolute lack of access to credit for a large percentage of people across Africa because of the lack of traditional collateral and the ineffective traditional credit scoring system. Majority of these people who lack access to credit are young professionals, small business owners, National Youth corps members and students. The second problem is the length of time it takes to pay out the loans in the event that the loan has been approved. The pay-out process usually involves a lot of hurdles and physical bureaucracies.
The customer segmentation is youth between the age of 18 – 40 who are currently under-banked or lack access to formal credit.
Financial Institutions ignore this huge market today because it is too expensive for them to deal with this market segment using traditional banking channels. Social Lender bridges this gap by providing access to this huge demography with formal credit.
Social Lender uses its own proprietary algorithm to perform a social audit of the users’ online, on mobile, on social media and other related platforms and give a Social Reputation Score to each. Users can borrow from banks and other financial institutions based on their Social Reputation Score. Social Reputation can be improved by providing more information e.g. social reputation score is improved by the introduction of Social Guarantor who provides electronic personal guarantee on the personality of the borrower or the transaction.
Social Lender delivers cash guaranteed by social reputation score in most cases within 10 minutes. In three steps, users are able to get quick cash from Social Lender. First, Immediately a social audit is conducted on the user (with user's permission) and the user obtains a social reputation score based on their digital fingerprint. Second, the user applies for cash using any of the available channels. Third, funds are approved based on partner-specific business rules and funds are disbursed to the users' verified Account (Bank Account or Mobile Money Account) usually within 10 minutes.
- Create or advance equitable and inclusive economic growth
- Growth
- New business model or process
What makes our solution innovative is our social reputation scoring and social guarantor model which can be licensed to financial institutions in this group. Social Lender is providing technology to enable our partners compete in these markets.
Other Alternative credit scoring companies like Lenddo, Kreditech and Hello Soda are exploring this market from the point of view of big data only and not from the point of view of reputation is Social Communities.
Data Science
We use data science to know our customers trustworthiness from the data they give us to grant loans.
With the social reputation algorithm a score is calculated, to enable users have access to quick cash and formal credit.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Machine Learning
- Big Data
- Social Networks
- Indigenous Knowledge
Social Lender is shaping culture by leveraging on social reputation to drive financial inclusion.
Social Lender helps people access financial services or borrow money from banks and other financial institutions guaranteed by their Social Reputation bringing these people (most times for the first time) to the formal credit system. Social Lender solve the problems of prohibitive cost to serve the market, inadequate financial history, unreliable credit score and lack of collateral for these people that hitherto prevented our partner financial institutions to serve this market.
We noticed a lack of access to formal credit for a vast number of people in Africa (50% of Adult population). These people do not have the typical collateral required by the banks (commercial & Microfinance) and as such are excluded. By leveraging on Mobile, Online, and Social Media & Other external data sources, we are able to provide a Social reputation score for these users which our partners are able to use in lending. Social Lender manages the process end to end.
Social Lender is bringing the target people to the formal financial system to enable them access other financial services. Lending is only an entry point. We are building a network for trust and enabling Financial Inclusion.
Social Lender Limited is a company created to operate, manage and license the solution in the various countries of operation as we develop more features and functionalities.
- Women & Girls
- Pregnant Women
- LGBTQ+
- Children and Adolescents
- Rural Residents
- Urban Residents
- Very Poor/Poor
- Low-Income
- Middle-Income
- Minorities/Previously Excluded Populations
- Refugees/Internally Displaced Persons
- Persons with Disabilities
- Nigeria
- South Africa
- Benin
- Ghana
- Rwanda
- United States
- Nigeria
- South Africa
- Benin
- Ghana
- Rwanda
- United States
We are currently serving over 80,000 people. In a year time we will be serving over 200,000 people and 5 years we should be serving over 1,000,000 people across Africa.
Our goal within the next year and next five years is to make sure that over 1 million Africans have access to formal credit. Our goal is also to solve the identification problem in (KYC) Know Your Customer problem in Africa and to help insurance company ascertain trust.
The 3 main risk our product is facing includes;
-Slow Growth
-Bad debts
-Partnership
The most important barrier to entry is for Social Lender to reach a critical mass of both industry partners and end users. We are patent pending in some jurisdictions. However, we do not believe this is a strong enough barrier in 2019.
Slow growth:
We are currently raising fund to stimulate growth by expanding our staffing, implement and integrate more technology interfaces, expand Social Lender’s brand and marketing reach, and to expand into new markets and countries of operation.
Bad debt:
On our roadmap is to add additional data set, mobile and social data sources, include machine learning and Improve our algorithm, all to reduce our already low bad debt of 2% to even lower.
Partnership:
On our roadmap is to increase our partnership in countries of operation in other to drive financial institutions. The lesser partner we have the lesser customers, the more partners we have the more customers we will have.
- For-Profit
Nill
Full-time Staff - 9
We are young energetic team with experience across finance and product development spanning over 20 years.
We have a female tech CEO Faith, who has a lot of experience in consumer services including over 7 years experience in finance and investment banking and CTO Bade, who has over 15 years experience in Technology building various products.
We saw a major need in our environment that we could solve. There is so much a simple access to formal credit - (like in the west with credit cards) can do for our society. We were uniquely positioned to solve the need.
Social Lender was started to solve the problem of accessibility to Funds for the general African community. Social Lender leverages on the vast information available about any individual based on natural interactions on Social Networks and also the person entire network and digital fingerprint
Social Lender has signed partnerships with 6 Financial Institutions in 2 Countries of Operations: Sterling Bank (Nigeria), Absa Barclays Bank (South Africa), iTrust (Nigeria), Unity Bank (Nigeria), Reliance Microfinance Bank (Nigeria) and FCMB Microfinance Bank (Nigeria) with a pipeline of 4 partners in 2 countries.
-Sterling Bank (Nigeria) - Sterling Bank Is targeting/ offering microcredit to Digital Natives- Absa Barclays Bank (South Africa),
-iTrust (Nigeria) - itrust is driving financial inclusion for Social Lender
-Unity Bank (Nigeria) - Unity bank is providing loans to the Northern part of Nigeria.
-FCMB Microfinance Bank (Nigeria) - FCMB Microfinance Bank is providing loans to the Southen part of Nigeria.
We operate a B2B2C sales model, We are projecting growth into Ghana and other international markets with the B2B2C sales model where we on-board a financial partner in a particular market the financial partner roll out our service for their customer base and this impact positively on our TAM. The customer segmentation is youth between the age of 18 – 40 who are currently under-banked or lack access to formal credit.
We are currently raising fund in equity and seeking grants.
We are partnering grant donors to extend formal credit to rural settlement.
Social Lender charges a licencing fee per annum to each financial partner
-Profit Sharing with Financial Institutions
-Transaction Fee for Pay with Social Lender
We are building a social network for Trust, Credit & much more. We are in search of strategic partners who can help accelerate our growth while we in turn deliver value based on our unique value proposition and strong network. We believe a partnership with you can achieve this and be beneficial to our organization in the following ways.
- Better Exposure.
- Networking with Industry Leaders and also other Start-ups.
- Funding Opportunity (We are raising $1million for growth in Nigeria, Ghana and some other countries in West Africa)
- Partnership
- Positioning Social Lender for the next stage of growth.
We are currently in a fundraising round.
- Technology
- Distribution
- Funding and revenue model
- Monitoring and evaluation
- Media and speaking opportunities
- Other
Strategic Partnership
Our initial target is an addressable market of $500 million across Africa, which the Company can target with the right strategic partnerships.
We would like to explore opportunities with your team in various areas. We have highlighted a few below:
1. Strategic Partnership in various areas of the company including End to End lending, Alternative Credit Scoring, API Integrations and so on.
2. Machine Learning & Data sciences support to enable us continue to improve the Social Reputation Scoring Algorithm (this is the main asset of Social Lender).
3. Support by organisations and individuals interested in Financial Inclusion space and Impacting the lives of our target demography.
4. Investment opportunity as we are currently fund raising.
Currently, there are 3 main development teams in Social Lender:
- PHP Team
- Mobile App Team
- Python / Data Science Team
Most of our deep tech is done by the Python Team.
Python / Data Science Team:
Our Python and Data Science Team are proficient in building Machine Learning Models to solve real world problem using
Social Lender’s main asset - Social Reputation Scoring.
The Social Reputation Score is a measure of Trust. In lending (the first industry use case), this can be seen as a measure of credit worthiness. In the future, the Social Reputation Score will be useful for several other Financial Services including but not limited to KYC, Insurance, etc.
We have built many models that predict the credibility of borrowers. The Artificial Intelligence embedded in these models has made the system to be stable thus the occurrence of bad debts has been significantly reduced. These models were built using Python and some libraries on top of NLTK, Convolutional Neural Networks and Artificial Neural Networks.
Due to continuous increase in data available to the organization, there is a constant requirement to analyse data and make meaningful organizational decision as surrounding risk and a measure of Trust.
The Python Team is responsible for Social Lender’s main Asset – Social Reputation Score.
Social lender is seeking to raise $1 million in equity or convertible note to: expand their staffing, implement and integrate more technology interfaces, expand Social Lender’s brand and marketing reach, and to expand into new markets and countries of operation.
Social lender also plan to add additional online, mobile and social data sources, include machine learning and Improve our algorithm, all to reduce our already low bad debt of 3.7% to even lower.
Women are the most under served People.
Social Lender gives individuals access to formal credit(with financial literacy programme for women, youths and focus in Northern Nigeria) from banks and other financial institutions guaranteed by their Social Reputation bringing these people (most times for the first time) to the formal credit system thereby providing them with quick access to cash to satisfy their needs.
Social Lender solve the problems of prohibitive cost to serve the market, inadequate financial history, unreliable credit score and lack of collateral for these people that hitherto prevented our partner financial institutions to serve this market.Over 75% of Social Lender first time borrowers have returned to the platform for more transactions after repaying their first loan.
No
No
Social Lender technology can be used for much more than Lending. The lending space was the easiest entry point and there was a massive and glaring need in this industry. We are building a social network for Trust, Credit and much more.
We look forward to Social Lender being used in other areas including but not limited to KYC, Insurance and so on.
No
CEO