Announcing the First Catalyst Fund Inclusive Fintech Investment — Destacame

Authored by: Jane del Ser
June 1, 2016 - 3 mins read

 

How could alternative data allow for better financial inclusion products for low-income customers?

Catalyst Fund is excited to announce its inaugural inclusive fintech investment in Destacame.cl, an alternative credit scoring platform that uses data such as bill payment histories for basic services, to assess individual payment capacity and creditworthiness. Founded in 2014 in Chile, Destacame.cl has pilots with nine financial institutions, has partnered with five utility companies, and has already amassed over 17,000 registered users.

In Chile, Mexico, and throughout Latin America, many individuals do not have any reported information about their payment behavior and, for those that do, credit scoring is principally negative. Destacame.cl solves this problem by aggregating and analyzing data from multiple existing sources of data, mainly utilities payment transactions, as well as geographic and socioeconomic information. It synthesizes the information and generates a score that an individual can use at their disposal. With users’ consent, Destacame.cl can sell these scores to financial institutions (FI), who are looking for better, faster, and cheaper ways to extend credit and other financial products to the largely credit-invisible population in Latin America.

Destacame innovates by:

Destacame.cl aims to decrease information asymmetries between financial institutions and customers, and help people take control of their information and demonstrate to banks that they are good payers.

 

 

For consumers, this means:

For financial institutions, this means:

 

Sebastián Ugarte and Jorge Camus, cofounders of Destacame

Company Overview

CEO: Sebastián Ugarte

Website: www.destacame.cl

Year Founded: 2014

Market: Latin America

Destacame was a BBVA Open Talent Latin America 2015 Special Financial Inclusion Award winner. The company also won the Chilean Avonni award for innovation and the Digital Bank Latin America competition in November 2015.

Over the next six months, Destacame will receive $100,000 USD in grant capital and receive the mentoring of its sponsor, Accion Venture Lab as part of the first cohort. The company will also work with BFA to identify specific advisory engagements towards strategic milestones and a growth trajectory.

We see a strong fit with Destacame’s service offering and the Catalyst Fund’s objective to accelerate early-stage inclusive fintech innovators, and we think Destacame.cl is an excellent launching point for Catalyst Fund’s work. We also see a rich learning opportunity with Destacame.cl in:

We are thrilled to welcome Destacame to the first Catalyst Fund cohort. Congratulations to the cofounders, Sebastián and Jorge.


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