Bizbaz, the next generation customer intelligence and risk assessment company headquartered in Singapore, is delighted to announce that it has closed its USD 4 million seed funding round led by HSBC Asset Management (HSBC AM). This round also received investment from Vynn Capital, a leading South East Asian venture capital firm specializing in early stage tech start-ups, new angel investors, and follow-on investments from SOSV and existing angel investors.
The investment signals support for Bizbaz and their mission to revolutionise the way in which customer insights and intelligence are analysed and used not only for risk assessment purposes, but for revenue generation opportunities too.
With more than seven out of ten of South East Asia’s 680 million population unbanked and a huge 67% mobile phone penetration rate1, Bizbaz is well positioned to empower financial services providers by offering them comprehensive customer intelligence and risk assessment solutions and thus enabling these organizations to acquire and serve unbanked and underbanked populations in the region whilst also allowing them to reduce their costs
“Most financial institutions and financial technology companies still use outdated financial-history based credit risk systems.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 ASEAN, the middle class is expected to more than double between now and 2030, to reach 334 million people2. Financial services are likely to 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 on-boarding clients with no previous financial records.” said Remi Bourrette, Head of Venture Investments, HSBC Asset Management.
About Bizbaz
Bizbaz offers comprehensive customer intelligence and risk assessment solutions that analyse and assess lifestyle and social as well as financial data of an individual. Using the latest insights from applied behavioural sciences, anthropology and machine learning technologies, Bizbaz is enabling and empowering its corporate clients to acquire new banked and unbanked customers, make better
risk-related predictions, mitigate costs and generate additional revenues. 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, this made sense at that time as the only digital data available about the person was their bank account related records, if such existed. Fast forward 50 years, and while there are a handful of innovators in risk assessment, unlike them, we took a holistic approach to analysing data and assessing risk.
About HSBC AM
HSBC Asset Management’s Venture Capital proposition provides investors with early stage exposure to emerging sectors that have the potential to create considerable financial and environmental value over the next few years. HSBC Asset Management is the investment management business of the HSBC Group. For more information, see www.assetmanagement.hsbc.com/uk
1 Source https://www.gsma.com/mobileeconomy/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/280222-The-Mobile-Economy-2022.pdf
2 Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/go-glocal-to-grow-in-asean | The Straits Times