Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Venkatesh Bala, Chief Risk Officer, Biz2Credit (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Can you give me one metric that gives me an idea of the number of banks that are using your solution?

Venkatesh Bala: If I look at banks and financial services companies, it’s a growing number. I’ll give you one example in the context of what is happening with PPP or the Paycheck Protection Program. The first PPP was launched in April and it went on until August. Now, the second round has begun.

The first time around, we built a platform in record time. In our platform, we now have tens of thousands of small businesses. This includes a lot of businesses that have below 10 to 15 employees. They make up 50% of what we have. We also have many banks and financial services companies.

Others are partnering with us and referring their partners to us. Right now, it’s in the dozens. A number that we stated publicly is that there are 15 to 20 banks that are using the platform. Now hundreds are using the platform. The interest in using a platform has skyrocketed as the banks needed help, particularly with PPP.

Sramana Mitra: That is exactly where I wanted to go – the people who are dealing with PPP processing. You have seen an uptick in adoption because of the PPP situation. 

Venkatesh Bala: Enormous uptick, yes. 

Sramana Mitra: In handling PPP, what have you learned? What are the open problems? What is addressed by the platform? What is out there that needs to be addressed? What are the open spaces?

Venkatesh Bala: SBA has upgraded their technology, which allows much more efficiency than what happened when they rolled out round one. They have simplified the process, but there are some casualties.

There is something called a draw one and a draw two. Draw one means that we haven’t received PPP in the first round. Draw two means that it’s the second time that you are looking for assistance. The conditions are different.

For example, for draw two, you can’t have more than 300 employees. You have to show that there has been a reduction of at least 25% in one quarter of 2020 compared to 2019. There are some other situations, specifically for the hard-hit industries like accommodation and food industries. There is a fair amount of complexity involved in that.

We have seen almost about 50/50 in terms of draw one and draw two. Ultimately, you want to serve the small business customer whether you are a bank or any other financial institution. You want to make sure that they get the money that they need.

There is a tremendous need right now. The digital process needs to be as streamlined and as rapid as possible so that the small business can use that money. That process of necessity has been rushed. Finding all the kinks in that digital journey so that we can, at scale, reach out to the SBA and help the customers for draw one and draw two is where the gaps are.

It’s a process that is going to get better in a couple of weeks. We have to rush between getting all the process flow in a scalable digital way and the kind of timeline in which it has been rolled out despite the preparation that we had with what’s happened with round one of PPP last year. 

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Venkatesh Bala, Chief Risk Officer, Biz2Credit
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