Financial Inclusion

For many small businesses, accessing bank funding can be a challenge as they may lack the required proper or audited financial records for banks to assess their creditworthiness accurately. This often results in a lengthy credit evaluation process and significantly higher costs of financing for them.

We address this funding gap through our UOB BizMerchant programme, which taps our data analytics-powered credit underwriting engine to make it easier for small businesses, particularly online sellers, to obtain bank loans. The credit underwriting engine uses data sets, such as those relating to the businesses’ day-to-day operations, to gain deeper insights into their credit behaviour. This in turn enables us to process loan applications with greater speed and accuracy, resulting in faster turnaround times for our small business customers.

In addition to enhancing the customer experience through a more frictionless loan application process, after the loan is approved, we offer banking solutions such as a transaction account and online banking services to support these small businesses holistically. With more data, we continue to refine the credit underwriting rules over time, which in turn enables us to support more online sellers eligible for working capital financing without the need for collateral.