A fi­nan­cial so­lu­tion for the man on the street and the un­banked. That is the premise on which WiLoan was built.

The Wi­pay premise is now be­ing pow­ered by in­no­v­a­tive and mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, with Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in mak­ing the as­sess­ments a loan of­fi­cer would usu­al­ly con­duct as a task.

“The prod­uct is re­al­ly de­signed for the man on the street. Peo­ple who have had some chal­lenges with the banks to get loans and fi­nanc­ing for their needs. We are start­ing from $1,000 all the way up to $50,000 and any­thing over that amount in TT dol­lars we will do a dif­fer­ent type of as­sess­ment,” said WiLoan CEO Ly­ron Mar­low, fol­low­ing the launch of WiLoan’s on­line plat­form at the rooftop of the Brix Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion ho­tel in St Ann’s, last Thurs­day.

“The app is set up where we use AI tech­nol­o­gy to help us to re­view and analyse the risk of each ap­pli­cant and then make in­formed de­ci­sions.”

WiLoan is not the first fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion to put stress on pro­vid­ing quick re­spons­es to loan re­quests from the pub­lic.

Three years ago, Massy Fi­nance’s on­line lend­ing plat­form, In­staLoan, sim­i­lar­ly launched at the Brix, al­so ad­vo­cat­ed that it would be dri­ven by a dig­i­tal and swift ap­pli­ca­tion process, of­fer­ing loans up to $50,000. It was suc­cess­ful, as in nine months is had achieved over $50 mil­lion in trans­ac­tions.

How­ev­er WiLoan is not a car­bon copy, and in­deed had been hon­ing its craft for close to four years.

“The con­cept was re­al­ly born out of an idea back in 2021 just around the time of COVID-19. We were hav­ing a dis­cus­sion about the whole is­sue of peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to ac­cess loans, the chal­lenges be­cause of COVID, peo­ple los­ing jobs and that type of thing. We un­der­stood that there was ba­si­cal­ly a lend­ing eco-sys­tem and we re­alised that peo­ple had chal­lenges in get­ting loans quick­ly and eas­i­ly,” said WiLoan chair­man Ash­ley Tay­lor.

Tay­lor, the for­mer CEO at Plipde­co, ex­plained that from there, the team be­gan to test the wa­ters fur­ther via a part­ner­ship.

“Based on that, we did a pi­lot pro­gramme where we part­nered with NATUC, the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre, which is ba­si­cal­ly an um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion for about six unions and 50,000 em­ploy­ees. So even though it was not a full-scale tech­nol­o­gy-based plat­form, the re­sponse was so over­whelm­ing we re­alised that hold on a sec­ond, this re­al­ly is a big is­sue and a re­al­ly un­der­served mar­ket.” Tay­lor ex­plained.

The part­ner­ship proved suc­cess­ful and the WiLoan team re­alised there was a mar­ket for their prod­uct. How­ev­er, the team de­cid­ed to im­prove the ser­vice fur­ther be­fore com­ing to mar­ket.

Tay­lor said, “We went back to the draw­ing board and said let’s put some re­search and work in­to this, to see how we can re­al­ly ex­pand this thing in­to some­thing that is big­ger, bet­ter and faster than what is cur­rent­ly ex­ist­ing in the mar­ket.

“So, af­ter a cou­ple of years of re­search and look­ing at what is hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go gen­er­al­ly and look­ing at what is hap­pen­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, we did a cou­ple of in­ter­na­tion­al vis­its to see what oth­er na­tions are do­ing. We de­cid­ed to de­vel­op some­thing that is above and be­yond what is cur­rent­ly ex­ist­ing in the mar­ket.”

Mar­low, who has 18 years’ ex­pe­ri­ence in the bank­ing, fi­nance and in­sur­ance sec­tors, al­so touched on the re­search done by the WiLoan team be­fore of­fi­cial­ly launch­ing the app last week dur­ing his speech at the launch.

He added, “Our jour­ney be­gan with an idea—a mo­bile-first app and in­ter­face con­cep­tu­alised four years ago. Through col­lab­o­ra­tion with key stake­hold­ers, we saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty to add re­al val­ue to the wider lend­ing space.

“Recog­nis­ing the po­ten­tial to be a ma­jor play­er, we em­barked on a jour­ney of con­tin­u­ous de­vel­op­ment and re­fin­ing our plat­form with in­sights gained from our coun­ter­parts in the re­gion and re­search and de­vel­op­ment trips to Mi­a­mi, Los An­ge­les, and Mon­ey 20/20 Las Ve­gas.”

Tay­lor al­so ac­knowl­edged that there were de­fi­cien­cies in the lo­cal bank­ing sys­tem that fur­ther gal­vanised the team’s dig­i­tal ap­proach and tar­get mar­ket.

“A sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Trinidad & To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cen­tre (TTIFC) and the Unit­ed Na­tions Cap­i­tal De­vel­op­ment Fund (UNCDF) in 2024 not­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent of the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion lacks ac­cess to a ba­sic trans­ac­tion ac­count.

“This most re­cent sta­tis­tic fur­ther un­der­scores the need for T&T to es­tab­lish a sus­tain­able ecosys­tem for ac­cess to af­ford­able cred­it. With one of our key taglines, “Good cred­it is life” we tru­ly recog­nise that the in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess cred­it or con­verse­ly the abil­i­ty to ac­cess it can per­ma­nent­ly al­ter the course of some­one’s life,” Tay­lor said.

He ac­knowl­edged there had been oth­er star­tups in re­cent years at­tempt­ing to ad­dress this gap, not­ing that with­in the last eight years, at least four ma­jor play­ers have emerged.

“Those play­ers have had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the over­all mi­cro-lend­ing en­vi­ron­ment by mak­ing these types of loans more main­stream and ac­ces­si­ble. De­spite this, there still con­tin­ues to be a por­tion of the mar­ket who are un­served or un­der­served for var­i­ous rea­sons in­clud­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, speed and ser­vice de­liv­ery,” Tay­lor said.

He not­ed that hav­ing such an op­tion was es­pe­cial­ly cru­cial not on­ly for peo­ple try­ing to re-find their feet af­ter tough eco­nom­ic sce­nar­ios, but al­so could be a key in­cu­ba­tor for small busi­ness­es.

He said, “In the Caribbean, mi­cro and small loans serve as a crit­i­cal fi­nan­cial aid for small en­tre­pre­neurs such as those in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, tourism and re­tail trade. De­spite this, many chal­lenges still ex­ist, how­ev­er, due to the sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of un­banked, their in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess cred­it or the high cost of cred­it due to mar­ket size and in­her­ent risk fac­tors.

“Sta­tis­tics show that small amounts of cap­i­tal can yield sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­pacts. How­ev­er, for the in­dus­try to thrive, gov­ern­ments, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, and fin­tech play­ers must col­lab­o­rate to ex­pand fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy pro­grams to en­sure re­spon­si­ble bor­row­ing and re­pay­ment; lever­age dig­i­tal so­lu­tions to in­crease ac­cess to mi­croloans for un­der­served pop­u­la­tions and de­vel­op sup­port­ive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works that en­cour­age mi­cro­fi­nance growth while man­ag­ing risk.”

The WiLoan chair­man not­ed that in many cas­es the un­der­served or un­banked com­mu­ni­ties would turn to preda­to­ry lenders and sub­ject them­selves to un­usu­al­ly high in­ter­est rates which could leave them trapped in a cy­cle of nev­er-end­ing debt.

Tay­lor added, “Recog­nis­ing the ef­fect of these types of loans in stymy­ing per­son­al, small busi­ness and so­ci­etal growth many mul­ti-lat­er­al agen­cies with in­ter­na­tion­al reach and lo­calised type NGOs cre­at­ed ini­tia­tives to pro­mote re­spon­si­ble lend­ing and bor­row­ing. These gained sub­stan­tial trac­tion ini­tial­ly in Asia, Africa and Latin Amer­i­ca but re­mained whol­ly in­suf­fi­cient to ad­dress the de­mands of the low­er to mid­dle-class seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion.”

He how­ev­er felt this could be ad­dressed in the fu­ture via sig­nif­i­cant changes in the statu­to­ry and le­gal re­quire­ments with­in the medi­um term to bring all forms of lend­ing un­der stricter reg­u­la­to­ry con­trol for the pro­tec­tion of con­sumers.