New aggregator uses data, AI
Dubai-based startup venture BankOnUs is aimed at simplifying the complex and confusing world of banking and insurance. The venture was floated by Kirtan Desai, co-founder, BankOnUs and Dhruba Jyoti Sengupta, co-founder, BankOnUs and Capstone Insurance a little over five months back and now delivers product comparisons for credit cards, personal loans, motor insurance, life insurance and health insurance.
The venture has combined power of data and artificial intelligence that can deliver better services to customers. “We analyse and get insights on how customers make product choices, spend, invest and make financial decisions, so we can customise the advice we give to our customers. We will also use this same data along with our banking and insurance partners to create and price products in the future. The days of mass product pricing will give way to customised pricing and bankonus hopes to drive this change. Insurance as an industry has always been driven by data. Insurers strive to know as much as possible about a customer before pricing a product. However, they have limited themselves to grouping risk and pricing accordingly. Some of our algorithms will give new insights and enable customised modelling and pricing. The data we produce will help banks know where a customer resides, what car he drives and other alternate data that will ultimately analyse a user’s digital footprint and help banks to make better lending decisions,” added Desai, a banking industry veteran having spent more than 20 years in sales and distribution, product development and marketing across India and ME region.
The venture received seed funding of USD1 million – in advanced discussions for USD5 million funding for Series A – and has witnessed a lot of interest from both financial and strategic investors. Sengupta – a veteran with 20 years in the banking and insurance industry has worked on product and marketing across several EWMEA markets – said: “We like businesses where information is asymmetric. None of us like to be a party to a transaction where the other side knows more than we do. Yet, with every financial product that is the case. The banks know more about the product they offer us and so does an insurance company. This is because financial institutions have thrived by making products complicated. The more complicated a product, more is the asymmetry of information. The bank or insurance company will know more than we will. We are out to change that. Imagine the magic of every product being simplified for you to understand. Every card and loan and insurance product compared to its competitor based on the true value that a customer can derive from the product. Magic can and will happen when you will know as much about the card or loan or insurance as your banker or insurer. Every customer can bankonus to empower them.”
BankOnUs has built a proprietary platform that uses dynamic content to deliver need based solutions to the customer. “The custom built algorithm identifies core product benefits and matches them with what customers are looking for in order to deliver a near perfect solution. Think of our competition as digital version of a product brochure while we provide real insight on the value of these products enabled by our powerful AI driven algorithms. As we gather this data it will become invaluable for banks and insurers to develop new products and price them better. The age old models for credit underwriting will change as we will share new insights with our partner banks. Insurers we partner with will be able to offer products based on our predictive modelling,” said Sengupta.
