SkorLife gives control of credit data back to Indonesian consumers – TechCrunch
Indonesia’s credit history bureaus now have about 92 million credit history documents, but the founders of SkorLife say numerous people have hassle accessing their very own facts. That’s why they developed the app, which not only allows people today see their credit rating histories for free of charge, but also presents personalised advice on how to enhance knowledge. The Jakarta-dependent startup declared these days it has elevated $2.2 million in pre-seed funding.
AC Ventures participated in the round, which also provided Saison Funds and angel traders like all the founders of OneCard Advance.ai’s Jefferson Chan KoinWorks’ Will Arifin of KoinWorks Lummo’s Krishnan Menon Evermos’ Arip Tirta of Evermos Qoala’s Harshet Lunani Init-6’s Willy Arifin Lummo’s Krishnan Menon Evermos’ Arip Tirta Qoala’s Harshet Lunani Init-6’s Achmad Zaky and executives from Northstar Group, Stripe, Google, Boston Consulting Team, Gojek and CreditKarma.
SkorLife suggests the personal, alpha model of its application has been downloaded more than 3,000 instances and is growing organically by 50 to 60 new customers a day. That surpasses its inner goal by 7x and the app will be offered for general public download quickly. The company’s new funding will be utilized on item advancement, new hires and marketing. SkorLife now has 10 employees, with ideas to increase headcount to 40.
CEO Ongki Kurniawan was formerly region head of Stripe Indonesia and also held leadership positions at Seize, telcoXL Axiata and Line, when COO Karan Khetan is a serial entrepreneur whose earlier startups incorporate 5x and BookMyShow Southeast Asia. The two met in 2018 whilst placing up a partnership involving Seize and BookMyShow to present ticketing expert services by way of Grab’s tremendous app.
SkorLife founders Ongki Kurniawan and Karan Khetan
Kurniawan tells TechCrunch the two spent a lot of time checking out unique concepts. The initially was to digitize the “pawn broker”/secured mortgage field, but the device economics did not function.
“However, we located that lots of Indonesians vacation resort to pawning their goods simply because they believe they will get turned down if they technique banking institutions,” he claimed, including that 7 out of 10 bank loan candidates do indeed get turned down. “This was even further validated after speaking with a quantity of field experts. We learned that Indonesia’s shopper borrowing pool is tiny.”
Whilst accomplishing their research, Kurniawan and Khetan also saw that a lot of Indonesians don’t have accessibility to their credit score scores and other data that would help them see how banks ascertain their creditworthiness, which in turn usually means they eliminate the chance to access affordable loans.
SkorLife’s founders say that creditworthiness is underused in Indonesia, where most economical institutions rating a person’s ability to get lines of credit rating primarily based on their “income worthiness.”
“The point to try to remember is not all people who has large income will pay back their credit card debt and not every person who has a reduced money will not shell out their personal debt,” Kurniawan said.
Kurniawan explained that most men and women in Indonesia are unaware they can access their own credit historical past and credit score scores, and believe that only fiscal establishments and financial institutions have obtain to that data.
If they do figure out how to obtain it, they have two alternatives. The initial is the free of charge route, exactly where they request data from OJK (Indonesian Economical Companies Authority). But the dilemma with this is that they either have to go to an OJK business office, or hold out days for an on-line appointment. The second, compensated route involves customers going to a few licensed credit rating bureaus in Indonesia to get their credit score reports. But these reports price tag dollars, and Kurniawan says they are several internet pages extensive “and not made to be digested by shoppers mainly because it is meant to be employed by analysts in money institutions.”
SkorLife solves those people troubles by providing people today cost-free entry to credit history scores they would usually have to soar by means of hurdles to get. Its major solution is a credit score builder application that enables people today to right away see and keep track of their credit rating scores, credit history stories and other knowledge from credit rating bureaus, for totally free. It also will help end users dispute inaccurate details on their credit score studies. If another person does not have a credit rating historical past still, the application will assist them get started setting up scores.
As a result of the app, prospects can see their BI Checking Rating, or Indonesia’s nationally-identified credit history data that is utilised by just about all fiscal institutions to make credit history decisions, as nicely as their credit score, which is generated by credit score bureaus to ascertain the chance of somebody defaulting on a personal loan in the following 12 months.
They also see what variables go into their credit score score, like their payment record, credit rating utilization, the equilibrium compared to their secured vs . unsecured credit history accounts, the age of each and every of their credit history accounts, ID checking to see if a monetary establishment is executing a hard look at on their data, the whole variety of credit score accounts they have, both of those active and inactive, and outstanding balances.
That details is then made use of to build AI-based, individualized insights for just about every shopper that they can use to improve their credit history scores. The application also has educational articles and a features that would make it effortless for buyers to dispute inaccurate data.
Some examples of insights involve payment history, and making it possible for clients to check out bill dates and set reminders, age of credit score (or encouraging consumers not to near a card that has been open for a very long time), and utilization. SkorLife endorses that prospects keep a credit rating card restrict utilization beneath 30% to enhance their score.
In a assertion, AC Ventures founder and handling partner Adrian Li mentioned, “The prospect in Indonesia is significant. Even as the house is comparatively untapped, the shopper credit rating current market size is presently north of US$185 billion. That explained, it has constantly been a obstacle right here due to the fact loan providers have never been ready to draw holistic conclusions about debtors based on limited and fragmented data. But with these knowledge troves just waiting around to be unlocked and utilized meaningfully in a customer-dealing with app, we are psyched about SkorLife’s eyesight and mission of putting people again in demand of their economical futures.