Bloomberg TV Philippines Live with Dmitry Voronenko | CEO | TurnKey Lender
TurnKey Lender's CEO Dmitry Voronenko on Bloomberg TV Philippines, Announcing Turnkey Lender Free Edition in the Philippines.
Date:
December 4, 2019
Category:
Interviews
One of the firms looking to respond to the government's call for financial inclusion is TurnKey Lender. A Singapore-based FinTech start-up with me today is Dmitry Voronenko he's CEO and co-founder of TurnKey Lender. Dmitry, it's very good to have you on the show welcome to Manila.
So let me get started with what you guys do because you build yourselves as a cloud-based loan management platform. How exactly does it work the market like the Philippines?
Okay, so what we do. We automate end-to-end lending business for microlenders, online lenders, P2P lenders, all the types of small and medium-sized lenders. So we automate loan origination, we automate loan processing, payments, credit scoring, different kinds of so we automate mobile-based scoring, we automate classic scoring, big data scoring, and also all the backend functionality. All the reports that big banks have so all the portfolio reporting and operational reporting.
TurnKey Lender means that it's a turnkey solution, so you not only get the technology - you get the whole technology. Our mission is to provide lending infrastructure, so once you have internet infrastructure, then if you're a local lender and you want to automate quickly because of competition, because of potential growth. You need quickly to turn in into the best possible infrastructure.
We've been doing previously, in my previous life or should I say with my previous company. I've been doing it for banks for ten years for large banks, including World Bank, for example, and some other large institutions. So when we saw this new wave coming especially in Southeast Asia, especially in countries like the Philippines. When these countries leapfrog, they actually jump over the banking loyalty in the United States. Everybody has ten credit cards, so it's just Millennials and some sub-segments that actually want it.
In the Philippines, everybody wants it because, again, banking conditions are not as high, and people are not accustomed to open banks. This is the first thing they saw. They see their mobile app to transfer money, for example. So it's easy to get them onboard, but it's still local so lenders need to have the technology to very easily turn it in. Not like the banks that are spending half a year, or two just to automate, configure, whatever. So they just need to turn it on and start working. So we have a cloud platform, they supply their logo then we white label it. So it could take from hours to several days just to get them set up, then they can adjust loan applications form and adjust their SMS reminders. So this is very very quick turnaround time. Simply turn key and start lending.
Is the service meant more for consumers or for small and medium enterprises?
So this is mainly for small and medium lenders. So like corporations, free banks, new types of digital lenders, and payday lenders too. So this is what we do. When we came to the market one and a half years ago, you know looking into the eyes of our customers that charge is 1% per day.
Actually, then seeing as this customer what our solution decided okay, I'd rather scale and turnaround my money, so instead of 1% per day I will be charging 3% per week. It's still huge, but we are seen as a solution. So they are changing their mind. They rather scale and make a turnover, rather than charging high, plus you got to remember competition.
Then you also say that you use machine learning and AI, artificial intelligence, to assess credit scores and determine risk ratings. How exactly does that work?
Again, I have a PhD in artificial intelligence. It was my passion in my previous career. I've done another artificial neural network software company. We've done projects, even with CT, with the Boeing satellite system with Pfizer, but it was very sophisticated neural network.
But this is how artificial intelligence should apply to real-life problems not for scientific stuff but for real results. Then I really got into this business with banks. And then here, what means microlending? It means a lot of data. Whether you go to Telcos and agree with Telcos because they provided it or didn't provide it, we have an Android app so customers who are eager and who understand they'll get a better credit score, they give them consent, and we just collect data from their mobile phones. How they move, what is their location, and we gather this data, then we analyze all these hundreds of thousands of parameters, finding out it's not that easy. So it's a lot of a high power overview.
Dmitry, lastly, what's the big plan for the Philippines here. I imagine it's an interesting market for your huge population and at the same time tech infrastructure is still a challenge?
We are very serious about the Philippines. We actually have planned grandiose. Also within Indonesia too. For the Philippines, we are right now hiring a business development director, and I believe we already found one.
So you already have an office here?
Yes, in our office we will have a support department here. We will have more sales and marking here.
In terms of subscriber base, what are you targeting?
Yeah, we are very ambitious, so we are targeting 500 subscribers, and that is why we are actually releasing a free version of our software. The most necessary module loan origination module will be released for free. So we also think this is our doing in order to educate the market. In order to bring it closer faster so they will start using it, they will understand how it's beneficial. Then they go for other modules payment automation, credit scoring, that is more efficient, brings them more money. So this is why we believe we can hit this target in one and a half year so we are really ambitious.
So you're going into a freemium model until you hit critical mass?
It's simultaneously, so some institutions are already telling us, "we need it all" we don't need just loan origination. Yeah, whoever needs it come in immediately but still try this to see how you can get rid of papers and do it faster.
