Dobin Co-Founder and CEO Khaled Benguerba
Dobin, a fintech startup aiming to offer a personalised financial ecosystem, was launched recently in Singapore. The startup uses open finance and AI to provide consumers with a consolidated financial view, a personalised financial profile, and a permission-based app for getting value from their data.
In this interview, Dobin CEO and Co-Founder Khaled Benguerba speaks to e27 about its offerings, USP, open finance, and opportunities in Singapore.
Excerpts:
How does Dobin differentiate itself from other companies offering consolidated financial views and personalised financial profiles?
Fintech apps that allow consumers to consolidate all their financial data in one place are not widely available in Southeast Asia due to long-standing limitations on access to bank account data.
Thankfully, this began to change with the launch of SGFinDex in Singapore, which allows users of banking apps to consolidate their account balances to better plan their financial future.
Dobin plays a similar role but focuses on helping users take better financial decisions daily. This is achieved by allowing them to consolidate all their expense and income transactions (in addition to balances) and automatically categorise them. This way, users remain aware of how much they earn and spend in different categories (e.g. groceries or shopping).
In addition, Dobin helps users tackle their financial needs holistically; the app allows them to track their consolidated finances, gain relevant insights to make smarter decisions, maximise savings with discounts and rewards, and borrow at attractive terms.
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Like other fintech products, we put much effort into optimising the digital user experience. In addition, we also put a lot of effort into harnessing transaction data to understand our users’ needs better.
Can you elaborate on how Dobin utilises AI to provide value to consumers through their financial data?
When handling users’ data, we follow a set of principles: first, users must provide their explicit consent for their data to be accessed; second, they must have control over what it is used for; third, they should receive tangible value in exchange for sharing insights from it.
We are building data analytics and AI capabilities of two different types. The first type is “insights and recommendations” to help users understand their financial situations and take better decisions.
For instance, we can help a user uncover and stop recurring charges for subscriptions they purchased in the past but no longer use.
The second category is “deals and offers” to help users prove their value to merchants and financial institutions and receive personalised offers.
For instance, we can help users share relevant information with lenders on how much they can afford every month to repay a loan. We currently use rule-based models, informed by our team’s deep industry expertise, but as we gather more data from our users, we will build predictive models using machine learning/ deep learning techniques.
Open finance is a relatively new concept. How does Dobin ensure the security and privacy of consumer financial data while leveraging open finance principles?
Dobin takes users’ data very seriously; we put a lot of emphasis on privacy, control, and security.
On privacy, users’ data will never be shared with anyone without their explicit permission (even with Dobin!). If the user agrees to share their data with Dobin (to help us improve insights and recommendations) or our partners (to receive valuable offers), it will be anonymised before it gets used or shared to protect users’ privacy.
On control, the user is always in the driver’s seat. They can review, pause, revoke or delete the data collected by Dobin at any time. They can also choose not to share their data, in which case it will only be viewed by them and stored locally on their mobile device.
On security, we protect the data with multiple layers of encryption. We collaborate with trusted partners who prioritise security and incorporate the latest data and security technology to ensure robust protection.
What measures does Dobin have in place to address potential biases or inaccuracies in its AI-powered insights and recommendations?
As we build and expand our AI models, we will ensure they are not biased by following a 5-step process.
- Design: our models are intentionally designed to exclude information that could introduce a bias towards specific communities.
- Data representation: we thoroughly evaluate the data we use to ensure it represents diverse communities fairly.
- Model development: throughout the model development process, we conduct bias assessments to determine if the model tends to assign lower scores to specific communities or segments.
- Reviews: we incorporate diverse perspectives by involving individuals from varied backgrounds in the review process.
- Explainability and transparency: we make the decision-making process explicit by showing each feature’s contribution to the model and how they interact. In addition, we regularly review our models and update them with new data and contextual information to reflect changes over time.
We adhere to guidelines such as the FEAT framework introduced by MAS when building our models. We also plan to actively share our learnings with the larger community to promote the responsible and fair usage of AI.
As a permission-based app, how does Dobin handle user consent and ensure that consumers have control over their data? Can users selectively choose what data they want to share and with whom?
At Dobin, we think about customer consent in three ways: data access, usage and sharing.
On data access, the user is prompted for permission for each bank they wish to link to the Dobin app rather than being asked to provide access to all their bank and credit card accounts in one go.
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On data usage, the user is explicitly asked whether they wish to authorise Dobin to use their anonymised data to improve insights and recommendations.
On data sharing, the Dobin app does not allow users to share data with banks, lenders or merchants. But this feature is in our roadmap, and when we launch it, users will need to give explicit consent before Dobin can build insights from their data and share them with 3rd parties.
How does Dobin source and integrate financial data from various sources to provide a comprehensive view? What challenges does the company face in accessing and consolidating data from different financial institutions?
Open Finance is the concept of exchanging financial data between organisations upon obtaining explicit consent from the customer. It is driven by two different yet complementary trends: regulation and technological innovation. The former refers to regulators encouraging or mandating financial institutions to build open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which allow third-party apps to retrieve customers’ data. The latter refers to different technological ways to retrieve data by either impersonating users when they login into their online banking environment or integrating with banks through private APIs under bilateral partnerships.
Since there is increased momentum from regulators to foster Open Banking, good progress has been made in most Southeast Asian countries. At the same time, new players known as data aggregators are emerging to allow access through technological innovation. Dobin partners with a number of these data aggregators to ensure a wide coverage of banking institutions. We are also exploring private APIs and monitoring the development of open APIs.
Can you share examples of specific value propositions or benefits that Dobin offers consumers using their personalised financial profiles? How do these profiles assist users in making informed financial decisions?
First, Dobin gives users a consolidated view of their income and expenses by securely connecting their bank accounts and credit cards across Singapore’s leading banks. This allows users to keep tabs on their income and spending patterns, uncover hidden spending patterns, and reduce regular expenses using relevant merchant discounts.
Second, as Dobin builds its data analytics and AI capabilities, it will create unique yet anonymised “financial profiles”. These profiles can indicate a user’s loan repayment capacity, spending potential with a particular merchant, or the credit card they are likely to use frequently. Users may utilise these “financial profiles” to “prove their value” to merchants and financial institutions.
Third, Dobin puts users in the driver’s seat to get value from their own data. By allowing Dobin to share their anonymised “financial profiles” with merchants and financial institutions, they receive personalised discounts, credit card recommendations, and attractive loan offers.
What steps does Dobin take to educate and empower users about their financial data and the insights derived from it? How does the company ensure consumers understand and can effectively utilise the information provided?
Giving users a holistic view of their finances is critical for Singaporeans, as only some make the right financial decisions. A 2022 study of over 1,000 Singaporean adults by SmartWealth revealed that 55 per cent of respondents are financially illiterate.
Additionally, 52 per cent said they are unsure how much they spend every month. With Dobin, users can now stay financially informed at all times.
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To be financially empowered, consumers need more than access to their consolidated financial data. They also need to understand the basic concepts of how to build good financial habits. Dobin also helps users on that front! Our blog provides insights on why financial visibility is important and practical tips on optimising their financial outcome.
How does Dobin plan to expand its services beyond Singapore and cater to a global audience? Are there any regulatory or compliance challenges it anticipates in different jurisdictions?
Our mission is to empower consumers in Southeast Asia to live a better financial life. We have launched Dobin in Singapore and plan gradually roll it out across multiple markets in SEA.
All markets have in common personal data protection laws that protect consumers from the misuse of their personal data and ensure they remain in control of it. Granular consent and strong data privacy measures are what Dobin lives by. Therefore, we do not foresee regulatory challenges.
We also intend to work closely with regulators and other industry players to help build a data infrastructure that enables more openness and transparency around the exchange and handling of consumers’ data.
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