This episode begins with a special Breaking Banks mashup as Brett King and Breaking Banks Europe’s Matteo Rizzi connect with Andres Perez, Co-Founder and Director, Fintech Association of South Africa, a young non-profit born from the race to digitization, not a battle between banks and fintechs. The three year old association is dedicated to promoting and supporting the growth and development of fintech in South Africa, and is enjoying nice traction. A population of 43 million, South Africa is in a unique position with 96% of its population financially included. Recent investments and strong support indicate that there’s opportunity to be had in South Africa’s unique ecosystem. Finasa.org.za is helping champion responsible innovation, and the ability to make more of an impact through collaboration. while developing and upholding best practices and standards that prioritize consumer needs and data privacy.

Then Brett turns the focus to LatAm with a model problem that will be increasingly looked at around the world as he speaks with Yoel Gavlovski, CEO and Co-Founder, QUASH.ai, a Miami-based startup and Fintech Americas winner that is focused on an alternative approach for credit scoring and lending targeted to emerging economies. For financial institutions seeking to increase credit origination to the underserved who have thin credit files, or low to no credit reference information, Quash.ai is finding different ways to get more information on clients, transforming data and using advanced analytics to turn these clients into low risk creditworthy borrowers. Prediction as a Service, adding capacity for FI’s for better lending, using large learning models, has increased inclusion for many who would previously have been rejected. How’s this for a stat: in performance analysis, since implementation, 20% of the people who previously would have been rejected, have now been included with no added risk to the lending institutions.