An estimated 2 billion people around the world are financially underserved. They’re hard to serve in part because they don’t have a documented financial history, or credit score, that can help banks and other traditional institutions understand their capacity and needs. Tala has developed an Android application that builds financial identities and delivers instant credit to these populations in Kenya, Tanzania, and the Philippines. Any person with a smartphone in these markets can download Tala’s app via the Google Play store and apply for a short-term, unsecured loan. In lieu of traditional credit reports, Tala's proprietary underwriting models draw on more than 10,000 mobile data signals including network diversity, social connectedness, geographic patterns, and financial transactions to score borrowers in real time and develop a sense of their financial wherewithal. The whole process, from application to loan disbursement, takes less than five minutes.
