by Suman Gupta
Rs 155 crore in daily transaction value
- FIA follows a ‘high tech’ (digital) and a ‘high touch’ (human network) approach to furthering financial inclusion.
- It serves over 1 crore women customers and has facilitated Rs 14,000 crore in bank deposits.
- It is promoting financial well-being through loans for sustainable livelihoods creation.
Gurugram, May 24: FIA Global financial inclusion services has crossed 10 crore in customers, which include individuals and micro-entrepreneurs. Of these, over 1 crore are women customers, and over 20 lakhs have enrolled in social security schemes like Jan Dhan Yojna and Atal Pension Yojana. FIA Global provides digital payments, loans & collections, insurance, and wealth management to the underserved, and has enrolled Self-Help-Groups through its indigenously developed B2B digital app, ‘FINVESTA’, and a network of 45,000 banking outlets manned by banking correspondents in 747 districts in India.
FIA Global partners with financial institutions such as nationalised banks and regional rural banks to offer sachet financial products in semi-urban and rural areas. Financial products are redesigned to match the requirements of the customers, which encourages them to invest and secure themselves financially.
FIA Global has developed a B2C digital app also, ‘FINTAP’, it uses Artificial Intelligence, facial recognition and Natural Language Processing to aggregate, redesign, recommend and deliver financial products at scale. The app uses icons for user interface, for ease of use where literacy levels are low. The app also enables central management of operations, and fraud detection. FINTAP is designed to work with low internet connectivity.
FIA Global has mobilized over Rs 14,000 crore in bank deposits and has crossed daily transaction value of Rs 155 crore, with customers in 45,000 villages and 4,600 towns.
Seema Prem, co-founder & CEO, FIA Global said, “We are delighted to have brought 10 crore individuals and micro-enterprises into the banking system and weaned them away from expensive sources of credit. Our objective is to go beyond digitization of cash and create sustainable financial well-being by facilitating income generation opportunities.”
FIA Global defines components of financial well-being as follows:
- Financial security, which is enabled by deposits in bank accounts.
- Financial resilience, which is enabled by medical & life insurance, and pension so that households are not one setback away from slipping back. FIA Global aims to have at least 10% of its customers financially resilient.
- Financial control, through income generating loans for sustainable livelihood creation, and supporting micro enterprises such as dairy farmers through a digital system which creates financial transaction history to make access to credit easier.
FIA stands for Fearlessness, Inclusivity, and Agility. It was co-founded in 2012 by Seema Prem, on completing her Sloan Fellows programme from MIT, USA.
FIA Global websitehttp://www.fiaglobal.com
