Thought Machine, a pioneering cloud-native banking technology company, has joined forces with Nikel, a fintech startup dedicated to facilitating access to credit for millions across Southeast Asia. This partnership aims to streamline Nikel’s lending process and accelerate the development of innovative financial products.
Established in 2018 as Impact Credit Solutions, Nikel specializes in providing small businesses with access to loans through its digitally embedded lending platform. The company offers a comprehensive digital lending solution that encompasses loan origination, underwriting, and collections, catering to banks and other enterprises seeking to engage in digital lending.
In a rapidly evolving landscape where many small businesses are transitioning to online operations, the demand for tailored loan products that meet specific needs has surged. Meeting this demand necessitates seamless orchestration among multiple stakeholders in the lending ecosystem, which includes e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, and service providers.
Nikel’s solution serves as a bridge, bringing together these diverse participants. As such, it became imperative for Nikel to adopt a modern core platform, exemplified by Thought Machine’s Vault Core, to streamline the entire lending journey. This encompassed borrower onboarding, loan requests, disbursement, and repayment processes.
Moreover, with ambitious plans to expand their services, Nikel sought to enhance flexibility, scalability, and configurability within their platform. Simultaneously, they aimed to introduce new products efficiently.
Thought Machine’s core banking platform, Vault Core, designed as a microservices-based solution, offered Nikel the flexibility to migrate existing services and introduce new modules, all managed from a single platform.
Embracing Vault Core, Nikel swiftly launched their first product within a remarkable 90 days and subsequently introduced subsequent offerings with minimal support from Thought Machine. The adoption of Vault Core allowed Nikel to design intricate products and features, consistently reducing their time-to-market for each new product by half.
An illustrative example of Nikel’s innovative approach is the creation of a lending product tailored specifically for the Islamic community. Leveraging Thought Machine’s smart contract capabilities, Nikel developed a Sharia-compliant end-to-end lending product that accelerates disbursement and offers real-time transparency to investors monitoring their loan portfolio.
Vault Core also facilitated the digitization of the Know Your Customer (KYC) process, incorporating e-signatures and e-contracts. In Indonesia, lenders typically perform comprehensive document checks to comply with local KYC regulations. Conducting these verifications in person during the COVID-19 pandemic proved extremely challenging. However, Vault Core enabled Nikel to introduce an entirely new e-signature product that streamlined and digitized the entire KYC process.
The synergistic blend of Vault Core’s advanced technology and Nikel’s ambitious vision is poised to create a more inclusive lending ecosystem, with a pronounced emphasis on supporting small businesses across the region. This partnership has the potential to revolutionize the lending landscape, offering unprecedented access to financial services for Southeast Asian enterprises.
