Tag: First Access

Financial institutions are trying to reach those people as quickly and efficiently as possible and to offer them credit to be able to grow businesses, [and] basically it’s like a $5 trillion credit gap across emerging markets for small businesses. And so these financial institutions where I was working were struggling to scale and meet the huge amount of demand for credit from customers because they have really manual processes.
https://kenyoncollegian.com/news/2019/02/on-the-record-nicole-van-der-tuin-07/

New York-based financial technology (Fintech) company – First Access, is partnering its Nigerian counterpart, ChamsAccess Limited, to deliver digitised and automated credit solutions to micro lenders.
https://guardian.ng/business-services/first-access-chams-partner-on-cheap-digital-credit/

In partnership with Esoko, First Access will develop Africa’s first-of-its-kind rural agricultural credit-scoring platform for lending institutions.
https://www.firstaccess.co/news/first-access-among-winners-of-mastercard-foundation-fund-for-rural-prosperity-innovation-competition

For example, First Access has created technology that utilizes financial service provider data in innovative ways to provide credit scores to clients in informal markets. Initiatives like this one help mobilise capital for entrepreneurs who otherwise would not have access. We need to think harder about ways to give SME’s access to funding on terms that aren’t restrictive.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ambassador-amina-mohamed/africas-entrepreneurs-str_b_13876004.html

If you’re on the outside the financial system, you don’t have a credit history that a loan officer can refer to; you may not have much documentation at all. In effect, you face a Catch 22. You’re excluded from the financial system because you’re excluded from the financial system.
It’s this problem that Nicole Stubbs has been trying to address with First Access, a New York startup that mines alternative financial data, including mobile phone payment histories.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3035336/using-mobile-phone-payments-to-get-people-with-no-credit-history-some-credit