CoinTribe, SMERA Ratings join hands to simplify MSME loan facilitation

India's leading online lending marketplace CoinTribe has announced a strategic alliance with SMERA Ratings Limited.

The partnership is aimed to counter the traditional inefficiencies in the credit assessment of MSMEs and to provide state-of-the-art technology driven services of CoinTribe to SMERA-rated SMEs.

It also intends to create new credit rating frameworks by converging technological and field expertise of both the industry leaders.

The joint collaboration will tap SMERA's proficiency in assessment, vast MSME-centric database, physical touch-points, and on-ground validation of companies. This will be further augmented with CoinTribe's online credit assessment and analytic capabilities - leveraging its proprietary credit engine that will empower lenders in providing agile collateral-free loans that precisely meet a business' credit requirements.

The overall assessment will comprise multiple factors such as performance of the MSME, market developments, volatility, domain type and cluster-based factors. The partnership will, moreover, grant all the SMERA-rated SMEs easy access to CoinTribe's cutting-edge credit services.

The strategic alliance also aims to bring risk-based pricing of loans into play against the prevalent fixed interest rates in MSME credits. At present, MSME loans, even for businesses with lower risk disposition, comprise flat interest rates based on business exposure to the highest volatility. This results in unfair interest estimation for MSME units operating within a lower risk profile. SMERA and CoinTribe will work together to eliminate this difficulty through this partnership.

"We strive to provide the highest degree of comfort and convenience in credit facilitation to MSME players. Speed and precision, in this context, become vital considering the urgency of credit within the sector. With our overarching goal to entirely eliminate the credit deficit from the MSME sector, we are highly delighted to announce our strategic alliance with SMERA Ratings. We are confident that our combined synergies will open new avenues and bring about strong disruptions in the way MSME lending happens in India," said Chief Business Officer at Cointribe, Vishwadeep Sharma.

"MSMEs can play the vital role of jumpstarting the economy in the face of uncertainties. The single biggest problem they face is fairly priced bank facilities and high quality banking services. At SMERA, we consider it our mission to facilitate this process by eliminating information asymmetry through high quality research and opinion. Our collaboration with CoinTribe will complement the initiatives taken by government of India in making the business environment condusive for MSMEs," said senior vice president at SMERA Ratings, Mrinal Singh.

SMERA Ratings Limited is a SEBI registered and RBI accredited full service credit rating agency. Founded in 2005 by SIDBI, Dun and Bradstreet information services, and prominent banking institutions, SMERA offers bond ratings, bank loan ratings and SME Rating services. The rating agency has assessed over 43,000 enterprises since its inception. This base will serve as a foundation for CoinTribe to fuel SME growth.