Indonesia’s credit bureaus currently have about 92 million credit records, but SkorLife’s founders say many people have trouble accessing their own information. That’s why they built an app that not only lets people check their credit history for free, but also gives them personalized advice on how to improve their information. The Jakarta-based startup announced today that it has raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding.
AC Venture participated in the round, which added Saison Capital and angel investors as all OneCard co-founders. Advance.ai’s Jefferson Chan; Coinworks Will Arifin Coinworks; Krishnan Menon of Lumo; Evermos Arip Tirta Evermos; Koala Harshet Lunani; Willy Ariffin of Init-6; Krishnan Menon of Lumo; Evermos Arip Tirta; Koala Harshet Lunani; Int-6’s Achmad Zaky; and executives from Northstar Group, Stripe, Google, Boston Consulting Group, GoJek and CreditKarma.
SkorLife says the app’s private alpha version has been downloaded more than 3,000 times and is growing organically at 50 to 60 new users per day. That exceeds the internal target by 7x and the app will soon be available for public download. The company’s new funding will be used for product development, new hires and marketing. SkorLife currently has 10 employees and plans to increase the headcount to 40.
CEO Ongki Kurniawan was previously the country head of Stripe Indonesia and held leadership positions at Grab, telcoXL Axiata and Line, while COO Karan Khetan is a serial entrepreneur whose past startups include 5x and BookMyShow Southeast Asia. The two met in In 2018, Grab and BookMyShow partnered to provide ticketing services through the Grab Super app.
SkorLife founders Ongki Kurniawan and Karan Khetan
Kurniawan told TechCrunch that the two spent a lot of time exploring different ideas. The first was to digitize the “pawnbroker”/guaranteed loan industry, but the economics of the unit didn’t work.
“However, we have found that many Indonesians believe they will be rejected if they approach banks, so they try to sell their goods,” he said, adding that seven out of 10 loan applicants are actually rejected. “This was further confirmed after speaking with many industry experts. We learned that Indonesia’s consumer credit pool is small.
When Kurniawan and Ketan conducted their research, they found that many Indonesians lack information to help them see their credit scores and how other banks determine their creditworthiness, which means they miss out on affordable loans.
According to SkorLife’s founders, credit eligibility is not used in Indonesia, where most financial institutions rate a person’s ability to access lines of credit based on “income eligibility.”
“The thing to remember is that not everyone with a high income will pay off their debt and not everyone with a low income will pay off their debt,” Kurniawan said.
According to Kurniawan, most people in Indonesia do not know that they can access their own credit history and credit scores and believe that only financial institutions and banks can access that information.
They have two options if you know how to get them. The first is a free route where you request information from the OJK (Indonesian Financial Services Authority). But the problem with this is that they either have to go to the OJK office or wait for online appointment dates. The second, paid method involves customers going to three licensed credit bureaus in Indonesia to get their credit report. But these reports cost money and are many pages long, Kurniawan said, “and they are not designed to be digested by consumers as they are intended to be used by analysts in financial institutions.”
SkorLife solves those problems by giving people access to credit scores for free so they can jump on the bandwagon. Its main product is a credit builder app that allows people to view and monitor their credit scores, credit reports and other credit bureaus for free. It also helps consumers dispute inaccurate information on their credit reports. If someone doesn’t have a credit history yet, the app helps them start building scores.
Through the application, customers can view the BI Checking Score or Indonesia’s nationally recognized credit information, which is used by almost all financial institutions to make credit decisions, and also see their credit score, which is generated by credit bureaus to determine the possibility of credit. A person who defaults on a loan within the next 12 months.
They also look at what factors are involved in their credit score, including their payment history, credit utilization, balances on secured and unsecured credit accounts, the age of each of the credit accounts, and identification of whether the financial institution is doing hard work. Check their data, the total number of credit accounts they have, both active and inactive, and their outstanding balances.
That data is used to create AI-based, personalized insights for each customer that can be used to improve their credit score. The app has educational content and a feature that makes it easy for customers to dispute inaccurate data.
Some examples of insights include payment history and allowing customers to check bill dates and set reminders, credit age (or encourage customers not to close a card that’s been open for too long), and usage. SkorLife recommends that customers use a credit card limit below 30% to improve their score.
In a statement, AC Ventures Founder and Managing Partner Adrian Lee said, “The opportunity in Indonesia is huge. While the space is relatively untapped, the size of the consumer credit market is north of US$185 billion. That said, it has always been a challenge here because lenders cannot draw general conclusions about borrowers based on limited and fragmented data. But looking forward to unlocking these databases and putting them to meaningful use in a consumer-facing application, we’re excited about SkorLife’s vision and mission to empower people to take control of their financial future.
