Pramod Kathuria is the Founder and CEO of Easiloan, India’s first digital home loan marketplace. A seasoned professional, Pramod is on a quest to bridge the existing gap in the home loan market by building a technology-based customer-centric and innovative solution. In his current position, Pramod is responsible for charting the company’s business roadmap and overseeing the expansion and fundraising. With an MBA in Marketing from Pune University, Pramod has over two decades of experience across the Home Finance, Banking, and Real Estate industry. Prior to founding Easiloan, he was associated with several prominent organizations, including GMR Group, L&T Realty, Lodha Group, and ICICI Bank, and in leadership positions at most of the places in the last decade.
We live in a digitalised world where technological breakthroughs have put everything on autopilot. From transportation efficiency and safety to food and healthcare availability, sociability, and productivity, technology has impacted every aspect of our lives.
While technology has found its place in many use cases, let us look at how the home loan industry might benefit from it.
It can speed up the loan process
The traditional loan process requires applicants to fill out various personal and financial details. Thus, by leveraging new-age technologies like ML, the lender can ensure that this information can be auto-filled, retrieved, and validated. This would reduce human error and increase the overall efficiency of the process.
The most crucial part of home loan application is credit appraisal that involves collection of personal and financial details of buyers followed by their verification. Even today, this remains dependent on human intervention, leading to elongation of timelines and level of buyer frustration added by multiple layers of checks, back and forth. This process can be made much more efficient with digitisation using e-KYC, auto-fill/fetch through OCR, and digital analysis verification of information from government databases. Finally, the customer will save time, and the bank will save resources.
Helps in the detection of fraud and risk management
Loan stacking is a frequent practice in the lending industry, in which borrowers take out multiple loans from various lenders. To address this concern, the home loan sector needs AI and ML skills. It will help lenders profile user behaviour and analyse enormous volumes of customer data and transactions to identify suspect trends that could lead to fraud. Furthermore, lending organisations can use the actionable intelligence acquired by machine learning technologies to make better decisions. Algorithms based on ML can help identify consumers who can default on their loans and help lenders redefine their loan terms.
Technology can help in making home loans accessible to all
One of the most important advantages of technology is its accessibility. Individuals in rural places can apply for a home loan using their smartphones. It’s especially beneficial for rural populations who may only have access to a few or no banking institutions in their immediate vicinity. As a result, tech-enabled home loans are an effective approach to expanding banking access across the country. It works just as effectively for urban residents who have the resources but little time to go from branch to branch in search of a home loan.
Help lenders make loan decisions
In the past, lenders used financial and other data to make loan decisions. However, today, lenders can use AI to grow their loan books by analysing structured and unstructured data, which will give them a competitive advantage. Lenders can use alternate credit scores to contact existing clients to market a pre-approved loan product or contact new leads. This will ensure a better and more inclusive credit ladder where smaller ticket and short-tenure loans are leveraged alongside larger ticket installments.
Conclusion
With changing customer expectations and market dynamics, the home loan industry needs a robust solution that can help them keep up. This is where technology can play a crucial role in helping them to improve efficiency, fight fraud, make a decision, and deliver a much better customer experience.