Shivani, how big of a problem is the exclusion of people from the
financial system?
It's a massive problem.
So, there are about 4 billion people today that represent the
global majority that are excluded from our financial
system.
And I think, again, when we think about the size of that
population, we already know it's a massive problem.
But I think it's also the missed opportunity that all of us are
actually being affected by as well by continuing to exclude
this population. It represents, again, about $10 trillion of
economic potential that is unmet today.
And, so, that's a true loss in GDP, a true loss of consumers
that, again, all of us would benefit from in terms of
innovation and purchasing power in our marketplaces.
And, so, when we at Tala really think about this problem and
opportunity, that's where we leverage technology and some of
the best tools that are now coming out around GenAI,
crypto, data, to really bring this consumer, the global
majority, into our marketplace.
And so what we've developed is a global financial platform that's
uniquely designed for the global majority.
We have a global money app that gives them access to instant
credit, payments, transactions, transfers, all in one
application.
And we've proven that this can work at scale.
We work across four countries—Kenya, Philippines,
Mexico, and India.
We've now worked with about 10 million customers around these markets.
And so it's really proving again that we can leverage technology
to be able to split risk at scale and to be able to provide
real financial services and access to the global majority.
How does it affect us?
How does it affect, I suppose, the individuals as well.
Completely. I mean, one, it's the fact that, you know, 4
billion people around the world are not able to meet their potential.
But what that means for the rest of us is also that they're not,
you know, participants in our global economy.
And so again, not having 4 billion consumers that could be
participating, that could be, again, going after bigger
opportunities, It represents a loss of economic opportunity, of
GDP, and I think of innovation, ultimately.
What are the challenges of reaching 4 billion people?
Well, I think, it is that the majority of the world is still
cash based.
And so when we think about that, what does that mean?
It means that they are still, in a sense, unidentified.
The majority of emerging markets, which is about 52% of
the global majority, are still transacting in cash.
There is no national ID systems in most of these markets.
So again, being able to reach this customer, identify them at
scale to prevent fraud, to be able to credit score them then,
to be able to give them that purchasing power. And then,
ultimately, to be able to personalize and transact with
this customer is still very cumbersome and very fragmented.
And so what we at Tala have done is to really think about how can
we leverage technology and the best kind of technology that's
out there, you know, machine learning, GenAI,
as well as kind of these key infrastructure pieces of
blockchain and these things to be able to leapfrog the global
majority into now the financial system.
What roles do the private and public sectors have to play in
this, and how do they assume join together, collaborate better?
Oh, I think it's a really exciting time because I think
that both public and private partners in this can actually do
what they're doing best or can do best in some sense.
It's that from the policy side of things we actually want
regulation.
It's better for private companies to come into regulated
markets knowing how to operate, play by the rules, so that
things don't shift on us over time.
I think it's also incumbent on the government's to and
policymakers to protect consumers, right, and to put
those rules in place around consumer protection, fair
lending, data privacy, data security. Those are all really,
really good things and create safe ecosystems for innovation.
I think from a private sector side, I think all of us need to
really start to think about again that idea of profit and
purpose going together and that if we can actually leverage
infrastructure and this new technology, there is, again,
that win-win for all of us.
Shivani, thank you so much.
Thank you so much.