Ujjivan Small Finance Bank to digitise loan origination; partners with fintech company Decimal Technologies; shares up 8.4% after SUCCESSIVE FALLS

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank (USFB) Limited and fintech company Decimal Technologies have entered into a partnership through which Ujjivan SFB and its channel partners will use Decimal’s digital lending platform Saarathi, USFB said in a press release issued on Tuesday.

The development comes days after founder of Samit Ghosh in his investor call has announced change in its top management. Ghosh, in the investor call on 20 August had acknowledged that Ujjivan was going through “a very difficult time” and highlighted issues related to provisioning and high attrition rate in the company across the board. 

See Zee Business Live TV Streaming Below:

The shares of USFB today ended up 8.4 per cent or Rs 1.55 on the NSE to settle at Rs 20. The stock has fallen on 6 occasions out of the last 7 trading sessions and on 13 occasions in this month excluding today.

This collaboration will enable the bank to digitise loan sourcing through its sales force as well as Direct Selling Agents (DSAs), the press release said. This is part of the Bank’s strategy to strengthen its digital infrastructure which has been on one of its key focus areas, the release further said.

Ghosh during his investor call has briefly talked about strengthening the digital initiatives.

“This partnership with Decimal Technologies digitises our loan origination journey through assisted mode and significantly improves TATs without incurring huge capital expenditure, thereby strengthening our overall business operations,” Dheemant Thacker, Head- Digital Banking at Ujjivan Small Finance Bank said.

“We continue to build a robust digital infrastructure to offer greater customer convenience and a superior customer experience through such fin-tech engagements,” he further added.

Launched in 2020, Saarathi is an AI-based, ready-to-use digital lending platform specialising in digitisation of loan origination journeys. As part of the partnership, Decimal’s ‘Saarathi’ is enabling 100 per cent digitisation of Ujjivan SFB’s loan offerings.

Saarathi can be used by bank’s sales channels to source loan files digitally. Unlike any digitisation project, Saarathi requires no upfront capital investment and significantly reduces the time-to-market by 95 per cent (i.e. from 6-9 months to one week), the release claimed.

Saarathi is integrated with Credit Bureau, NSDL, document verifications systems, Google Maps for geo-tagging, bank statement analyser and more, resulting in improved efficiency of credit underwriting for Ujjivan SFB, the release said.