Canadian fintech startup and credit assessment company, Periculum, has launched in Nigeria to address the challenge of domestic credit to the underserved markets.
The company is focused on ameliorating financial inclusion in emerging markets by putting in place automated credit assessment tools that bridge the consumer credit gap and support financial institutions in providing credit facilities to those financially excluded while making smarter decisions.
Periculum formally launched its financial service product offerings during a recent media interaction.
While speaking at the launch, Michael Temitope Collins, Periculum’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, said: “Africa needs domestic credit to stimulate real economic growth. And this is not only bank-to-business credit; it can also be digital lending for short-term credit as well as ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes.
“The absence of tech-enabled credit assessment infrastructure has limited the quality and quantity of lending and may be behind the risk premiums borrowers have to pay, and the harassment practised by predatory lenders in countries like Nigeria.
“Periculum will change that. We are a top provider of data analytics and credit assessment services targeted explicitly to underserved markets. We help our customers to reduce their lengthy loan application processing times and loan default rates and offer loans to the underbanked and unbanked consumers as well as micro, small and medium-scale enterprises. With reliable, tech-enabled, credit assessment services, financial institutions can increase lending to those that need credit.”
The company has also announced the appointment of a Managing Director, Damilola Aluede, to grow its business in Nigeria.
Periculum was founded in 2019 and helps its banking and lending customers detect fraud risk, assess creditworthiness, and analyze existing data. The company provides real-time decision-making, analysis, and credit underwriting solutions to financial institutions including banks, non-banking financial companies, and fintech companies.
By offering information on the creditworthiness of customers and automating the loan decision process, customers of Periculum can gather and analyze borrower information and assign a credit score faster, with real outcomes on financial inclusion in Nigeria and other major markets.
Periculum provides data aggregation APIs and platform solutions that collate data from partners including open banking APIs and the credit bureaus, to provide total financial and data profiles of prospective borrowers and third-party entities. Its clients include but are not limited to Fundii, Vola Africa, Lendaba, Sycamore, Golden Ox Partners and Venero.
While talking about its product roadmap and current services, Collins said: “We offer services that include Credit model development, SMS data aggregation and analysis, financial data analysis, and other data analytic solutions. We can help our customers with solutions such as fraud detection, insights for lenders based on customer segmentation and customer lifecycle value, insights to retailers and ATM operators, and several other benefits”.
Periculum was accepted into Techstars in 2021 and is among the 2021 Techstars Montréal AI cohort, and the Founder Institutes’ Select Portfolio. It raised a $620,000 pre-seed funding round to help in expanding its team, improve product development and scale its operations in Nigeria and other markets in 2021.
The company currently offers services to customers in Canada and Nigeria and plans to expand to Ghana, Kenya, and Egypt before the end of the year.
