Bizbaz, a Singapore-headquartered customer intelligence and risk assessment company, announced that it had closed a US$4 million seed funding round led by HSBC Asset Management (HSBC AM).
This round also received investment from Vynn Capital, a Southeast Asian venture capital firm specialising in early-stage tech startups; new angel investors; and follow-on investments from SOSV and existing angel investors.
“Most financial institutions and financial technology companies still use outdated financial-history based credit risk systems. Our solutions analyse all financial and non-financial data, which have meaningful impact on risk assessment for loans, insurance and other financial services. The new funds will accelerate development of new solutions and better support our growing client base of financial institutions and fintechs in Asia, Africa and beyond,” said Hayk Hakobyan, CEO and Co-founder of Bizbaz, in a press statement.
Bizbaz aims to empower financial services providers by offering them comprehensive customer intelligence and risk assessment solutions. This will enable these organisations to acquire and serve unbanked and underbanked populations in the region while also reducing their costs.
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The solutions combine insights from applied behavioural sciences, anthropology, and machine learning technologies.
Financial-history-based credit bureau scoring as a means of assessing a person’s risk became a mainstream technology used by financial institutions in the late 1970s. According to Bizbaz, this made sense at that time as the only digital data available about the person was their bank-account-related records, if such existed.
Remi Bourrette, Head of Venture Investments, HSBC Asset Management, explains the firm’s decision to invest in Bizbaz.
“In ASEAN, the middle class is expected to more than double between now and 2030, to reach 334 million people. Financial services will likely expand at the same pace, if not faster. Our investment in Bizbaz provides a compelling exposure to this market shift in the region and other developing economies. It will support the development of its technology, which overcomes the major obstacle of onboarding clients with no previous financial records,” Bourrette said.
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