Credit Engine: Driving Data-Driven Debt Collection in the APAC

Credit Engine, a Japanese fintech company with a regional office in Singapore, offers a cloud-based lending platform (SaaS) that empowers institutions to enhance their existing loan services. This customizable platform utilizes data-driven technology to streamline the entire loan process, from application to collection. Since its 2016 launch with "LENDY," an online lending service, Credit Engine has focused on creating a user-friendly experience for both lenders and borrowers, aiming to elevate the efficiency and impact of the lending and debt collection industries. With that, why don’t you join me in learning more about Credit Engine with its APAC Market Expansion Manager, Kentaro Hara.

Could give us a background on your career and how this has led you to Credit Engine?  

I have a business development background in different industries, including the public sector. I worked in business development with Japanese and South American companies. These industries spanned across food, agriculture, food providers, gaming, and operatives among others. After this, I moved into the tech sector in business development and started in hospitality and travel. Afterwards, I moved to real estate and now I am in the fintech industry.

What is Credit Engine? 

Credit Engine is a system provider. It is a fintech solution for the lending ecosystem that has loan origination, loan management system, loan collection and right now, we are working on a credit model building. We are a type of company that is between a consulting company and a system provider.

What sets Credit Engine apart from other credit scoring companies or loan providers? What unique features or benefits do you offer?

It's more about the service itself rather than the product. It’s about giving the flexibility to our clients when it comes to incorporating our products to their companies. We are not just a package system provider, we are making a lot of adjustments and adding new features. It’s all between costing: how much would they want to execute these things In-house or how much would they want to use our system to have this kind of flexibility that also includes post-performance.

Can you share an example of how Credit Engine has helped a customer? Could you share some success stories?

We focus more on the loan management system. The industry still lacks automation: in the front end, the user easily applies for the loan, but in the back end there are a lot of offline processes. This takes time to disburse the credit. The benefit of using Credit Engine revolves around the automation and digitalization processes. Process optimization is a big benefit for clients. Additionally, there is a lot of collectible data at the back end of these things. All these data can be data points for the credit model, among others.

There's a lot of credit model products in the market that are based on telecom data, alternative data sources, and psychometrics. What makes us different is that every business or financial service is targeting different sectors of end users. Each of these users have a profile. As a result, we make everything from scratch and try to develop the best credit model for them.

Does Credit Engine have plans to expand its services to new geographic markets or customer segments? What are your future plans?

In the short term, we are focusing on the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. These are the three biggest markets in Southeast Asia. Other countries like Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia do have some potential in the market, but these are just not our main focus as of now. Exploring these countries really depends on the opportunities that arise.

For example, we started to develop a debt collection system for Guatemala. The reason why we are able to develop here is driven by the fact that we were able to participate in an accelerated program that was organized by the International Development Bank (IDB). It was an opportunity for us to understand the microfinance system in Central and South America. We are looking for opportunities in different types of markets too like Europe and the Middle East as well.

Kentaro Hara is the APAC Market Expansion Manager of Credit Engine. Kentaro is responsible for conducting market research, networking, project management, and regional progress tracking among others. He is an imperative figure in supporting the growth and inevitable success of Credit Engine in the APAC region --- and eventually beyond. As seen in him, Kentaro works towards providing fintech solutions for the lending ecosystem in the region, trying to make it as accessible as possible.

Visit www.techshake.asia if you would like to know and connect more with Credit Engine.