Indian lender Bank of Baroda (BOB) has launched an end-to-end digital platform to offer loans in partnership with non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).
The credit platform uses rule-based algorithms for underwriting and credit assessment while offering loans to retail customers and MSMEs.
It supports both non-discretionary and discretionary models of co-lending for secured or unsecured loans.
Currently, the government-backed bank has formed an alliance with NBFCs and housing finance companies that include U GRO Capital, Paisalo, Edelweiss Housing and Centrum Housing Finance.
BOB is looking to add ten NBFCs to its platform and is targeting a INR100bn ($1.2bn) co-lending loan book in the next two years.
“During the testing phase of the platform, we had tied up with U GRO Capital. There are around four more players in the pipeline to get onboard the platform. So far, there was no end-to-end digital platform for co-lending in India, everything was done manually or what was being reported as co-lending was actually direct assignments,” Bank of Baroda chief digital officer Akhil Handa told Financial Express Online.

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By GlobalDataAccording to Handa, the bank’s bigger ambition is to reduce interest rates for end consumers.
The only way to achieve it is through an end-to-end co-lending technology platform, he added.
Bank of Baroda executive director Vikramaditya Singh Khichi said: “The digital co-lending platform will pave the way for both Bank of Baroda and our NBFC partners to seamlessly integrate and enable lending to borrowers with improved TAT.
“Co-lending is a priority area for the Bank and we believe that this state-of-the-art platform will help to achieve significant milestones in the coming years.”