Fintech founder using AI to improve lives and livelihoods in Bangladesh
Women in Tech Excellence Rising Star of Financial Services awards winner, Shabnam Wazed is shaping fintech, using AI to make financial services more inclusive.
Shabnam Wazed is Founder & CEO of AGAM International, an AI driven SaaS platform which Wazed designed to revolutionise lending to both individuals and businesses, by empowering the individuals and businesses who have been locked out of lending markets.
AGAM is based on an algorithm which makes decisions not just based on collateral and credit history but on other quantifiable characteristics. It allows potential borrowers to improve their credit scores through financial education and engagement. AGAM is headquartered in the UK and at the moment the service is democratising access to finance in Bangladesh, but Wazed plans to roll out to other South Asian economies in due course.
A lawyer by training, Wazed became very aware of finance exclusion when working in the UK on her MSc in Emerging Economies and International Development.
"That's how I became involved with technology," she says. "I wanted to find out that how we could bridge a gap between the financial services world and unbanked and underbanked individuals who might be completely new to financial services or might never have been part of the formal economy."
Wazed has a self-stated passion for impact - and not on a small scale, hence her focus on developing a mobile application which could empower those who historically would have had trouble building a credit history - which includes a lot of women. She's already making quite the impact.
Wazed closed out last year with an oversubscribed funding round which saw the Development Bank of Wales among other global backers, invest in AGAM. She also oversaw the roll out of a nano-loan scheme, powered by AGAM, by Bangladeshi Prime Bank, which has the potential to allow millions of Bangladeshis to access credit for the first time.
This year has involved an additional pilot with Prime Bank which allows bank employees to access wages in advance to reduce their need for loans from less reputable or more expensive sources, a partnership with Bangladesh's largest payment gateway system (SSL) which provides better access to working capital for SSL merchants, and a partnership with a Bangladesh-based NGO which will enable more than four million garment factory workers, 60% of which are women, to access nano-loans and earned wage access for the first time.
Female fintech founders are rare
Wazed would very much like to see more women entrepreneurs, and she isn't the only one. The global economy, including the UK, continues to be constrained to the tune of billions, in part due to the tendency of the business world to fail to recognise talent and innovation if it doesn't present as a man.
More women are founding companies, but they find it much harder to raise finance than male founders, many of whom are serial entrepreneurs. Last year, 6.5% of Fintech founders in Europe were women.
"One thing that would help," says Wazed "is having sufficient representation, so that every girl who's in their high school can pick up a magazine or read the news and see a female entrepreneur. When I was younger, I saw the odd female entrepreneur but there's probably one female for 1100 men. Women don't have role models to live up to. If there was more coverage of female entrepreneurs from different parts of the world, women in particular will be more encouraged."
Wazed acknowledges that the lack of role models is a frustratingly circular discussion, and that female founders invariably feel more pressure to act as a role model to others. It's a mental load that male entrepreneurs don't have to carry. What advice would she give to the female entrepreneurs of the future?
"We know the glass ceiling is there so we need a certain level of resilience. Staying resilient and staying optimistic is key. Because we know the world around us is more inclined to men and it might make us more likely to give up. We may get a lot of discouragement and obstacles along the way but having that hope is very important."
AI as a force for positive change
The kinds of patriarchal power structures which place these obstacles in front of women trying to start businesses and create change have also permeated the algorithms with which we all interact multiple times a day (whether we realise it or not.) Algorithms fed with biased data produce biased results, which in turn further distort algorithmically driven decision making.
Wazed makes a highly persuasive case that her lending algorithm runs counter to this pattern and that it is having a positive impact by removing the subjective biases that exist in face-to-face banking, particularly in countries like Bangladesh.
"In our part of the world, the average turnaround time for a loan to be approved was 14 - 21 days. It is a discretionary process subject to subjective bias from a loan officer. What we have done is enabled people to apply from home and get a result in less than five minutes. Using our tech and the channels it's created has enabled a large segment of salaried workers who are predominantly female to gain empowerment over their own lives. Female merchants, women working from home, one person ventures are now able to access credit based on how much they sell. We are also opening doors to finance for gig economy workers."
Wazed is aware that there are large categories of worker who may well own a basic smartphone but not be practiced in the use of mobile applications.
"We as a team are personally very invested in using AI and technology for a good. We're using it to improve lives and livelihoods in places where they never had any options before. The people who are left out are those who are not digitally native. So our system factors that in and when we launched the pilot last year we have bite sized educational modules on how to use an application. It's trying to be inclusive of those customers."
An indicator of the impact that AGAM and Wazed have had is the fact that the central bank has of Bangladesh has added "nano-lending" as a regulated product because it simply didn't exist as a concept before AGAM came along.
In an era where AI is presented in the most negative terms imaginable it is refreshing to see an algorithm working for the material benefit of potentially millions of people.
Shabnam Wazed is a judge for the Women in Tech Excellence Awards 2023. Click here for further details on sponsorship opportunities or table booking queries.
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