DataRobot > Case Studies > Carbon Transforms Consumer Lending with DataRobot

Carbon Transforms Consumer Lending with DataRobot

Customer Company Size

SME

Region

Africa

Country

Nigeria
Kenya

Product

DataRobot
Carbon Mobile App

Tech Stack

DataRobot's prediction API
DataRobot MLOps

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Revenue Growth
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Applicable Industries

Finance & Insurance

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing
Business Operation

Use Cases

Predictive Replenishment
Fraud Detection

Services

Data Science Services

About The Customer

Carbon is a fintech company based in Lagos, Nigeria. It was started by Ngozi Dozie and his brother Chijioke. The company empowers individuals with access to credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. Carbon is committed to serving the underbanked population of Nigeria, a country where over 40 million adults do not have bank accounts. Despite having a staff of fewer than 150 people worldwide, Carbon has leveraged modern technology and data science to operate profitably in a market that traditional financial institutions have avoided for being too risky.

The Challenge

Ngozi Dozie and his brother Chijioke identified a significant gap in the Nigerian financial landscape, particularly in the areas of consumer lending and credit infrastructure. Out of 100 million adults in Nigeria, over 40 million of them did not have bank accounts, and there were only about 200,000 distributed credit cards in the entire country. Commercial banks were hesitant to offer consumer loans due to the high risk associated with lending to consumers without credit. Building a credit score in a market like Nigeria is a huge challenge, with little documented financial history or asset ownership. This presented an opportunity for Carbon, the fintech company started by Ngozi and his brother, to help serve the underbanked population of Nigeria.

The Solution

Carbon committed to a data-first strategy, leveraging modern mobile app technology with cutting-edge data science supported by DataRobot. Carbon's models leverage a diverse set of data from first-, second-, and third-party sources to build a credit rating. Within five minutes, users receive a credit rating and “good” customers gain access to better rates and higher limits, while higher-risk customers receive higher interest rates. DataRobot’s groundbreaking credit risk algorithmic engine powers Carbon’s mobile app. Carbon processes 150,000 loan applications each month through DataRobot’s prediction API and tracks those deployments in DataRobot MLOps. Four separate scorecards provide insight into each customer’s likelihood to default on their loans. The app then adjusts their lending terms accordingly.

Operational Impact

Carbon processes 150,000 loan applications each month through DataRobot’s prediction API.
Four separate scorecards provide insight into each customer’s likelihood to default on their loans.
The Carbon algorithms also take into account fraud and anti-money laundering practices, which are prevalent in the Nigerian market, and serves up numerous guardrails accordingly.
DataRobot has already dramatically streamlined and accelerated their credit model governance process, to the point where new models can be deployed in hours, rather than the months it usually takes at large banks.

Quantitative Benefit

Carbon is now one of the biggest success stories in the African financial market, disbursing over 3,000 loans per day.
During their recent launch in Kenya in January 2020, Carbon’s team was able to easily retrain and redeploy their models as they built up their customer database.