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.
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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.
According 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.”