Oze

Oze enables banks to digitally lend to small businesses. Across Africa there is a $331B MSME credit gap. This is driven by antiquated origination processes at banks, an inability to assess risk, and a lack of formalized digital management tools and processes used by small business owners. Oze provides banks with an end-to-end digital origination system that allows any bank to start lending to small businesses. The Oze business app makes our solution unique. It supports the professionalization and digitization of financial data and business processes for SMEs. With the app, SMEs can keep records, track inventory, send invoices and receipts, manage credit, and sell online. Use of the app also generates powerful behavioral data. All of this data is fed into our machine learning model to predict credit risk, making it possible for banks to lend to formerly excluded SMEs. In our pilot, we’ve made over $1.7M small business loans and our portfolio has been profitable since Day 1 with NPLs as low as 1.97% in our core cohorts. We are scaling up our solution through contracts with some of the continent’s leading banks and development finance institutions (DFIs).