Biometrics and psychometrics used in loan management for EVs

RevFin, an Indian fintech company that uses biometrics and psychometrics in loan underwriting and management for electric vehicles, has received $14 million in funding led by Omidyar Network to continue expanding. The company says it is “building India’s largest lending company.”

RevFin uses an alternative underwriting technique that mixes psychometric and biometric “tests” to predict the likelihood that someone will pay back a loan.

The company uses a low touch digital model and uses an app to verify a customer’s identity. It uses biometrics to compare a video of an individual to the face on their ID document.

The app determines the customer’s honesty by having them respond to a series of questions about themselves referring to information that is already available in the public domain. RevFin also pulls phone SMSes and other data based on a customer’s documents, according to Inc42. It compares this information to determine if the customer is being honest.

Next, the customer will answer a series of questions that have no right or wrong answer, but reveal insight into the personality and behaviors that is believed to correlate with their likelihood to pay back a loan. It also may use data from a person’s social network to make inferences about a customer’s performance based on that of their network.

RevFin partnered with Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur to develop the psychometric testing method, Indian IT publication Dataquest reports. The company also plans to add voice-based authentication and sentiment determination in the future.

By using alternative methods to determine risk, the process facilitates auto loan access for Tier 2, 3 and 4 customers who may not have an established credit history, which will ultimately expand access to EVs.

“We are solving the problem for 44 percent of Indians who are financially excluded and cannot get a loan for buying an income-generating vehicle,” says Aggarwal in an interview with Your Story.

“We are trying to solve for financial inclusion as India has a huge credit gap driven by lack of education, geography, language barriers, and credit footprint,” he continues.

Philanthropic investor Omidyar Network, as well as the Asian Development Bank, Companion Capital Limited, a number of angel investors, and existing investors participated in the series B funding round.

Omidyar’s contributions to financial inclusion efforts also include support for ID4Africa and the Smart Africa project.

The company partners with local manufacturers and has already issued loans for over 34,000 EVs. It is set on financing 2 million more in the next five years.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  financial inclusion  |  fintech  |  India  |  Omidyar Network  |  RevFin  |  sentiment detection