IBM to help micro-financier to spur growth

Global software major IBM has entered into a six-year pact with leading micro-financier Janalakshmi Financial Services (JFS) to spur growth and expand its operations across the country.

"We will provide JFS a technology platform with mobile and analytics-based solutions to harness customer information and automate its processes," IBM's Indian subsidiary said in a statement here Wednesday.

The city-based JFS provides finances to urban under-banked people, including micro and nano enterprises, which lack access to formal banking and financial services.

"As we plan to increase our footprint to 1,400 branches and 20 million accounts by 2020 from 154 branches and three million accounts currently, we were looking for a partner to provide a scalable and viable business solution," JFS chairman Ramesh Ramanathan said.

IBM will augment JFS payment platform to offer new products for customers, use analytics for quick credit decisions and help improve its distribution and collection models.

"Our cloud solutions will help JFS to support its multiple deployment solutions and ensure fully integrated service management," IBM India managing director Vanitha Narayanan said.

JFS will also use IBM's "biometric dedupe" solution to enhance the speed of de-duplication of fingerprints while on-boarding new customers.

"IBM's innovative commercial model will provide a direct connection between business performance and IT costs, while enabling us to scale operations and build an agile technology environment," Ramanathan said.

The micro-financier will use IBM's MobileFirst solution to support its sales force for door-to-door marketing and customer services.

"We will also use IBM's OpenPages software to manage risk and compliance and IBM's FlieNet content manager to manage enterprise content with greater speed, efficiency and accuracy," Ramanathan noted.