Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

On April 15, 2018, China’s Pintec Technology and United Overseas Bank (UOB) of Singapore launched Avatec.ai – a joint venture said to “help banks and finance companies to be more efficient and more accurate when assessing credit quality of potential customers, including those who are new to credit.”

More recently, UOB signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with OctoRocket.asia, itself a joint-venture between Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Y3 Technologies that offers business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform, targeting businesses in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Per the MOU signed between UOB and OctoRocket, the bank will enable small businesses that use OctoRocket for at least six months to apply for financing directly via the online platform. UOB plans to use Avatec’s technology to assess the applicant’s creditworthiness based on its transactional data on OctoRocket, removing the need for applicants to submit their company’s financial statements when applying for financing.

Avatec uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to gain insights into the applicant’s cashflow and day-to-day operations, determining the applicant’s credit quality quickly and with more certainty. This will enable UOB to cut the time taken for loan approvals from an average of 2.5 days to just 15 minutes.

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