Ex-TNEX chief Bryan Carroll heads new Credit-Decisioning-as-a-Service start-up SMEApprove
Former TNEX chief Bryan Carroll has taken the lead on a new Credit-Decisioning-as-a-Service (CDaaS) platform called SMEApprove, which targets banks, fintechs and other lenders seeking to support the global SME sector.
Bryan Carroll heads CDaas platform SMEApprove
As a prolific developer of digital banks for the financially underserved, Carroll tells FinTech Futures how he’s struggled to ignore the “glaring truth” of the $5.7 trillion funding gap experienced by SMEs worldwide.
Although admitting that the industry’s current players are actively seeking to address this gap in their lending strategies, Carroll pinpoints the application of traditional lending models, and their limited access to holistic data sets, as a detriment to “the bit at the bottom that remains underserved”.
“I think fundamentally banks, of course, see this massive possibility to be sustainable, and to make profits, and to serve SMEs that are underbanked, but they just don’t have the technology to do it,” Carroll claims.
He previously held various digital leadership roles at the Bank of Ireland and served as CTO for the National Bank of Abu Dhabi before co-founding Vietnamese digital bank TNEX in 2019.
Carroll explains how his latest venture, SMEApprove, seeks to enhance banks’ credit decisioning abilities by providing access to wider and more alternative data sets.
The open API-connected platform uses AI to analyse loan applications against more than 300 additional data points, helping lenders make more informed decisions about the creditworthiness of SME clients.
SMEApprove also operates a portfolio tool, described by Carroll as “sticking a loop on a loan”, in order to assist banks in monitoring loans once they’re administered.
Carroll reveals that the start-up, which is based in Dublin, has already gained a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) partner in Mbanq, which is adopting its CDaaS solutions across all client platforms.
Carroll’s interests in SMEApprove sit alongside his current standing as CEO of InclusionFS, an advisory and delivery services business he founded this year to help banks across emerging markets cultivate more socially inclusive strategies.
