Financial Inclusion Is Failing. The Problem Isn’t Access
For decades, the standard response to financial exclusion has been singular: “Improve Access.” We treated it as a logistical and infrastructure challenge. The strategy was clear: build branches, open accounts, and push entire populations previously unbanked into the formal system. The Illusion of Progress: Included in Form, Excluded in Function By our conventional metrics, the […]
Credit Risk Models for South African Banks: Building TCF-Compliant Underwriting AI Under Basel III
TL;DR A South African bank CRO building or reviewing an AI credit risk scoring model in 2026 faces three regulatory demands simultaneously, each from a different supervisory body, each with its own documentation requirements, and each carrying its own examination consequences. The Prudential Authority requires that IRB credit risk scoring models are validated to Basel […]
AI Credit Underwriting for Indian Banks and NBFCs: How to Expand Credit Access While Managing Risk
TL;DR For most Indian bank and NBFC leaders, AI credit underwriting presents itself as a dilemma: expand credit access to underserved borrowers, or maintain rigorous risk management. The instinct is to treat this as a trade-off, that you can do one but doing both simultaneously requires compromise. This framing is wrong, and the evidence from […]
Why Demographics Fail Banking: The Behavioral Fingerprinting Alternative
Key Takeaways Banks lose millions targeting customers based on who they are rather than how they behave. Demographic segmentation measures stable attributes that correlate weakly with dynamic payment behaviors. Age, income, and geography describe customers. Transaction patterns predict what they actually do. The shift from demographic to behavioral segmentation rests on understanding why demographic prediction […]
