Insight

Insight

AIZEN, selected as 101 Top South Korean Startups & Companies

Best Startup Asia announced a list of 101 Top South Korean Information Technology Companies and Startups. Annually, Best Startup Asia awards the most successful startups in Asia to accelerate the growth of startups which push the limits of innovation. AIZEN Global was selected as ‘101 Top South Korean Information Technology Companies and Startups’ for a variety of approaches to innovating the industry. AIZEN is redesigning Digital Banking with AI Lending Platform ‘CreditConnect’, powered by proprietary AutoML platform ABACUS. ABACUS is a financial AI solution that combines nonfinancial data to create prediction models and transforms them to credit data. Meanwhile, CreditConnect automates the entire credit cycle based on ABACUS’s models, thereby connecting the data platforms with banks. This allows data platform customers who have had difficulties in their credit supply to acquire credit services seamlessly. As a Top South Korean IT startup, AIZEN will keep expanding its business beyond the domestic market of Korea to Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

A new era in which banking permeates into daily life

In a recent event in New York, CB Insight offered a new flash of inspiration to the world of fintech. Technology now permeates into all aspects of our life, and the financial industry, in particular, is facing its rapid innovations. With new financial models such as banking services, buy now pay later (BNPL), cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence (AI) financial services offered ever anew, we face an age where we can no longer be sure about who is the competitor. In particular, big tech and traditional financial institutions have emerged from their past habits of opposing fintech as a competitor, instead working together to create new digital services wanted by customers and transforming previously complicated and unwieldy financial services into new and easily accessible forms. In banking services, there has been a transition from a traditional method, which limited low interest rates to certain groups based on the risk management framework or assessment from the institution, to new forms of services such as BNPL, nonfinancial data from credit bureau (CB) institutions, and application programming interface (API)–based and open banking services. The expansion of the financial model through data and AI represents an evolution of banking services, namely, one allowing new customers quick access to banking services. In particular, AI model–based banking services have garnered great interest for their capability to identify and expand the customer basis toward new and rapidly growing markets, such as e-commerce and mobility. This is evident in the fast growth of the American firm Upstart, which has successfully utilized the concept of AI lending. In a similar vein, AIZEN has successfully expanded its business beyond the domestic market of Korea to Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Its CreditConnect model offers a convenient way of connecting data platforms with banks, expanding the concept of AI lending through a one-stop financial process that encompasses credit assessment, product delivery, and risk management. In other words, AIZEN’s CreditConnect model brings the innovation of a seamless lending service close to the daily lives of its customers, who had been forced to rely on high-interest credit because of rejections by major banks. That is what AIZEN offers to the world right now—a leading direction toward the age of change, where the finance of the future is created upon the transformation of our daily lives through technology.
Global Big Data Credit Rating and AIZEN Banking Service

The latest credit rating trend uses global big data such as China’s Zhima Credit, the United Kingdom’s Credit Kudos, Singapore’s Lendo, the United States’ Signify, and Japan’s J.Score, among others. As the center of industries moves toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it has become necessary to supplement the traditional credit rating. As the digital footsteps of individuals and companies overflow, it has become possible to use diverse data, which also had an impact. The new credit rating trend is changing the financial industry, and the phrase “alternative credit scoring” has become popular. Zhima Credit (China) is the credit rating company of “Ant Group,” the financial subsidiary company of Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company. It is also considered the world’s most valuable fintech company. Zhima Credit is regarded as having succeeded at calculating the credit scores of consumers and small- and medium-sized businesses (350–950 points) based on big data and at using nonfinancial data to compute credit scores of financially disadvantaged companies. Credit Kudos (United Kingdom) conducts credit ratings based on consumer spending data and thus provides the service of calculating the credit score necessary when applying for a loan. It also gives loans to individuals and companies, and makes credit decisions through an open banking decision engine and assembly. Meanwhile, Signify (United States) is a company that rates individuals’ credit according to their mobile phone usage behavior and uses the rating for financial goods. Thus, it provides services to clients with mobile phones but who lack credit information and, therefore, have less finance access. J.Score (Japan) was established through the merger of Japan’s SoftBank and Mizuho Financial Group. It provides loans and evaluates the ability of lenders to pay back using artificial intelligence (AI). As such, credit rating using global big data is diversifying. AIZEN is a technology that can simultaneously process in parallel thousands and hundreds of AI modules and models that can combine both financial and nonfinancial big data information. Thus, it creates the AI model necessary for “credit.” Moreover, it establishes AI banking services by providing the entire cycle required for loans, not just simple credit rating, and then assembles information of various forms, such as shopping, mobility, medical, and education, to provide loan services actual clients need and not just underwriting. AIZEN thereby completes the cycle of enabling information’s re-reflection in the underwriting policy with risk-based management. For AIZEN’s AI banking service CreditConnect, a team composed of members from global financial agencies has applied the key modules necessary for AI credit servicing. A management team that operated global portfolios as large as KRW 130 trillion for Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, and Volkswagen Financial Services makes and operates the AI loan services, firmly innovating AI finance. CreditConnect, created for global credit rating that can lead to lending, is continuously growing in Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Korea, with advanced AI banking services.

How we change the finance industry with AI

We live in a world where management can be more effective with artificial intelligence (AI). Using real-time enterprise data, AI solutions, data analysts, and algorithm professionals analyze customers’ status, predict which product is recommendable, and carry out demand-based inventory management by sharing relevant information with distribution centers. With the expansion of this trend, AI liberates humans from basic labor and provides a scientific foundation for various decision-making processes by cooperating with humans rather than replacing them. AI has automated the process in many areas, such as disease diagnosis, translation, and call center functions. It is changing industries and expanding its fields further. Innovating finance through core modules necessary for decision-making processes in the finance industry, AIZEN Global continues to focus on “finance.” AIZEN established an AI overdue prediction platform, which is a first in the industry, detected abnormal transactions of card companies through deep learning, and produced an AI platform with 99% accuracy that performs an attribute analysis of insurance claims. It also developed an AI prediction model to calculate interest rates and credit limits, launched banking services in Southeast Asian markets, and completed an AI-based anti–money laundering model. All these attempts are new in the finance industry, and AIZEN has succeeded in making these products more sophisticated. Technologies making it possible to apply and study numerous core functions of finance and quickly process a large amount of data, automatically learn and update models, and allow for real-time processes to remain at par with financial companies are AIZEN’s core assets. AIZEN’s AI-based financial solution “ABACUS” incorporates the core expertise of its team, which consists of members from global financial and IT companies. Unlike general-purpose US AutoML solutions, ABACUS, with “AutoML specialized in the financial sector,” became the foundation of speedy financial innovation. For all projects, ABACUS performs real-time predictions based on data analysis, modeling, and modeling results. Ultimately, future financial services will be provided based on real-time decision-making using AI solutions. AIZEN also launched “CreditConnect,” a banking-as-a-service, in the Vietnamese market to resolve credit gaps in response to the needs and demands of financial institutions and data platforms. This will be developed into an AI platform that can provide finance in the data economy based on AIZEN’s “AI-based finance” technologies. With its AI automated credit decision-making processes, AIZEN established a system that can grow in Asian and global markets, as well as domestic ones. Based on its proven AI technologies, AIZEN has formulated a design to operate global businesses, and “CreditConnect” has become a platform to “connect” financial and nonfinancial sectors.

AIZEN expands its financial services for e-commerce sellers

AIZEN plans to focus on e-commerce data analysis and the values required to provide the financial services that sellers actually require. AIZEN offers AI analysis for various data, such as the amount of transaction, accounting cycle, refund history, and daily report, spread out across 9 to 10 (on average) e-commerce platforms for each seller. Based on these, AIZEN also works together with its financial partners for credit calculation, which will allow AIZEN to provide lending services through its ‘CreditConnect’ service. CreditConnect uses AI-core operation to provide credit cycle-based banking services and manages credit services based on financial risk management. E-commerce sellers in Korea faced difficulties in balancing accounts during the period of purchase and sales, and they had to go to financial institutions to apply for financial services when they faced such difficulties. . AIZEN’s e-commerce aggregation platform is expected to facilitate the balancing of the accounts by showing the cash flow of the e-commerce sellers in a clear manner, and to provide accessible credit services through its CreditConnect function. AIZEN plans to continue its work in using new technologies to facilitate the financial services in the rapidly growing e-commerce market, and in providing seamless financial services to those who faced difficulties in accessing the financial services. The company also plans to expand and enhance its platforms connecting e-commerce and finance through its AI Core engine.

Thousands of AI Models Needed for Future AI Banking

AIZEN has based its financial decision-making on its specialized