Today marks exactly one month since more than 300 digital mobile lenders were barred from forwarding the names of their respective loan defaulters to credit reference bureaus (CRBs).
The announcement was celebrated by the critics of mobile lenders as a positive step that would mean total annihilation of "predatory" loan apps considering that, according to them, CRB listings was the apps' single most powerful weapon that kept their clientele on toes as regards to loan repayments.
Their argument was pegged on the fallacy that not many digital lenders would go on to risk their investments by lending out their money without an assured mechanism of how they would recover it from defaulters.
"It is the end of the road for the 'nosy' industry disruptors," they may have declared with finality!
However, one might be compelled to think that Chinua Achebe had some of these digital lenders in mind when in his novel 'Things Fall Apart' figuratively wrote, "Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching."
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What a great analogy! Indeed, creative and innovative minds, just like Eneke, will always adapt to abrupt changes in their environments and continue to survive unperturbed. That's why I feel that the critics of digital lenders while buried in their absurdly blinded euphoria, may have missed this fact brought about by the 21st century technological reality and upon which the loan apps are founded.
CreditHela Technology
Take for example the CreditHela loan app which has now incorporated highly advanced algorithms optimized for identifying less risky clientele. Now if this move by CreditHela is not equivalent to killing two birds with one stone, then I don't know what to call it.
First, this technology will ensure that the app will be able to separate wheat from the chaff. That is to say, a good digital borrower who may have had to suffer the actions/inactions of a bad borrower (the root cause of the fiasco that brought us to where we are) if CreditHela exited the market, is now assured of a new lifeline.
Second, the technology means that CreditHela will continue to serve its clientele base but this time round, only those who can be relied upon to live up to what they commit themselves to. And let's be honest here, reliability and trust are the core ingredients of any agreement. Period! No two ways about it.
In conclusion, the CreditHela innovative technology will save the baby from being thrown out with the bathwater, unlike the CBK blanket directive that seems to do the exact opposite.