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Fintech platform CredAvenue has partnered with Infosys Finacle to develop innovative co-lending solutions. Finacle is a part of EdgeVerve, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys. As a digital banking solution provider, it addresses the core banking, lending, digital engagement , cash management, wealth management, treasury, analytics, AI, and blockchain requirements of financial institutions. Chennai-based CredAvenue is a fully integrated, unified digital platform to discover, trade, execute and fulfil debt solutions for investors.
The digital lending sector in India is expected to reach a valuation of USD 350 billion by 2023 from USD 110 billion in 2019.
In 2018, RBI announced a co-origination model between banks and Non-Banking Financial Companies – Non-Deposit taking – Systemically Important (NBFC-ND-SIs) for providing competitive credit to the priority sector. In 2020, RBI permitted banks to co-lend with all registered NBFCs (including HFCs). Ever since, a lot of co-lending partnerships have been announced. State Bank of India’s partnership with Adani Capital to offer credit to farmers, Union Bank of India’s collaboration with UGRO to facilitate last-mile finance for MSMEs, Bank of India’s co-lending partnership with Vijayawada-based IKF Finance to offer commercial vehicle loans, to name a few.
Co-lending is essentially a collaborative financing model between NBFCs and banks to disburse loans. It benefits both partners by giving NBFCs access to low-cost capital and enabling banks to access new customer segments historically inaccessible to them without incurring high operational costs. Moreover, the borrowers get access to funds at considerably lower interest rates while bringing them under an organised lending structure.
CredCo-Lend
CredAvenue’s CredCo-Lend helps streamline the entire co-lending process for lenders and originators by bringing banks and NBFCs in a unified marketplace. CredCo-Lend ensures entities comply with KYC/AML norms without compromising processing time and seamlessly shares customer information and supporting documents between the originator and the co-lender.
Personalised and automated workflows, reconciliation, invoicing and managing repayment split between the co-lenders, CredCo-Lend ensures the lending institutions can focus on credit disbursal growth and customer expansion without the hassle of long drawn out technical integrations. At the core, CredAvenue’s offering is about interoperability.
CredAvenue’s clientele includes Kinara Capital, a leading collateral-free MSME loan provider; SmartCoin, a lending platform that offers short-term credit; and Orange Retail Finance India Private Limited (ORFIL), an NBFC. With CredCo-Lend, Kinara Capital was able to disburse loans worth Rs 125+ crore via multiple lenders. CredAvenue marketplace gave them access to qualified and verified lenders.
CredCo-Lend gave SmartCoin access to lenders and a co-lending platform to increase loan offerings, expand the target audience, and disburse more loans to the credit-strapped segments of the economy without hassles.
CredAvenue has become the fastest Indian fintech startup to join the unicorn club. The startup has facilitated loans of over USD 10.5 billion to date. More than 2,300 corporates, 450 enterprises and 750 lenders are active on the platform. CredAvenue has raised USD 137 million in Series B at a valuation of USD 1.3 billion. The fresh funds will be used to expand its business in India and to acquire companies to fuel its growth.
What does the new partnership mean?
CredAvenue’s partnership with Infosys will help their banking clients automate and streamline their co-lending operations. “At the core of this collaboration is our desire to create a strong technology and data-driven environment for co-lending and co-origination. This partnership with Infosys Finacle is a game-changer and a global first, which will resolve the integration problems between banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) at the category and ecosystem levels. This platform will simplify the co-lending processes of banks and NBFCs through deep integration between banking platforms and co-originator platforms. It is estimated that the banks using this platform will be able to invest in less than a tenth of the current time taken. Besides, the banks will be able to partner seamlessly with small NBFCs, reaching out to last-mile borrowers,” said Gaurav Kumar, founder and CEO, CredAvenue.
Typically, the lending entities rope in tech firms to take care of the tech side and streamline their processes. Sometimes, banks approach fintechs with NBFC licences to enable co-lending.
“Two technology leaders came together to reimagine the colending ecosystem with the possibility of real time reporting and processing of the co-origination assets in banks’ core banking and loan processing systems and helping meet RBI compliance,” said Sameer Singh Jaini, CEO, The Digital Fifth.
As lending becomes increasingly digital, the collaboration will facilitate banks to automate and streamline their co-lending operations. This will accelerate the co-lending ecosystem and bring down the cost of credit to a great extent as banks will be able to participate on a large scale with NBFCs and fintech.
“We are pleased to welcome CredAvenue to the Finacle partner ecosystem. The co-lending business model is seeing significant growth. It is helping banks, Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs), and Housing Finance Corporations (HFCs) leverage respective strengths to improve credit flow in the economy. Our collaboration with CredAvenue will help our clients effectively tap into the growing opportunity and automate and streamline their co-lending operations,” said Venkatramana Gosavi, Global Head of Sales, Infosys Finacle.
A 2021 BCG report titled “The Poster Child” said co-lending is a great enabler for the flow of credit to small and medium enterprises, with NBFCs taking care of the last mile. Against this backdrop, CredAvenue and Finacle coming together can be seen as a right step in the direction to solve India’s liquidity problem.
