To keep abreast of advances in innovative financial technology (fintech), Taiwan's Financial Supervisory Commission is gradually loosening financial regulations, allowing banks to provide growingly diverse and convenient services. This has also changed how people manage their finances. Personal loans are becoming a popular way to raise capital. According to the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC), 1.58 million individuals in Taiwan have applied for personal loans with a total balance exceeding one trillion NT dollars.
According to Alpha Intelligence co-founder LC Huang, there are a lot of websites providing personal loan information from many banks but without credit risk assessment, they are not of much help to people intending to apply for loans. As opposed to these websites, Alpha Intelligence's AlphaLoan is a cloud platform trained on AI coupled with machine learning using a massive amount of personal loan data to offer credit risk assessment. Users only need to enter their information on AlphaLoan and they will have an idea what interest rate they may get and which banks they will have a better chance of getting their applications approved. Alpha Intelligence's statistics show that AlphaLoan achieves more than 90% accuracy.
According to Alpha Intelligence co-founder Alvin Lin, it is common knowledge that banks decide the interest rate on a personal loan based on an evaluation of the applicant's credit history and financial well-being. Most existing personal loan websites offer information from the banks' perspective. More often than not, they only list the lowest interest rate, such as 0.88% or above. People have no idea what interest rate they will get for their loans. They will only know when their application is approved after they gather the required documents and submit an application in person to a bank branch. AlphaLoan, on the other hand, offers information from the users' perspective. After filling in the online form with their accurate data, users will see what interest rate the banks are likely to offer them. AlphaLoan can significantly reduce the time it takes for pre-evaluation.
Startup Terrace Kaohsiung AWS JIC resources help Alpha Intelligence accelerate generative AI development
Founded on the principle of "improving life with data to free people and minds," Alpha Intelligence is dedicated to bringing technology to life and using data science to resolve inconveniences in people's lives. Built on Alpha Intelligence's strength in both software development and data science, AlphaLoan harnesses the power of machine learning and AI. It has made achievements in digital marketing, financial services, and risk management.
When Alpha Intelligence first launched AlphaLoan, most banks held a hesitant stance as they were unfamiliar with this type of tool. Luckily, some banks that were more at ease with online marketing showed great interest in partnerships with AlphaLoan, which helped buoy Alpha Intelligence's overall revenue. Today AlphaLoan has more than 600,000 registered members and more than a dozen collaborating banks. Lin pointed out that Alpha Intelligence does not seek to increase the number of banks it works with but instead focuses efforts on selecting suitable banks for its members.
Huang remarked "Amid flourishing generative AI developments, we are glad to be working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) through Startup Terrace Kaohsiung AWS Joint Innovation Center (JIC). Apart from AWS cloud services, we also use the machine learning service Amazon Textract to extract content from documents as well as Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that offers a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies to create a document recognition system." He added "As digital tools make progress, the process of submitting loan applications to bank branches physically will definitely be replaced by an online approval process in the future. In view of this, we are making preemptive moves into this market segment. We aim to launch the beta version in November 2024. The biggest advantage of Amazon Bedrock is the wide-ranging selection of high-performing foundation models. It allows us to concentrate on the development and optimization of models for specific loan application scenarios, thereby significantly shortening the learning curve for our R&D team."
Alpha Intelligence forays into Southeast Asian markets, starting from Vietnam
Alongside rapid revenue growth in Taiwan, Alpha Intelligence is exerting all-out efforts to expand into other Asian markets. Apart from Japan and Korea with a sound financial regulatory system, Alpha Intelligence is also foraying into Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia. It has built an autonomous AI-based assessment system for a foreign bank in Vietnam. This will serve as a solid foundation for Alpha Intelligence's expansion into Southeast Asia.
Lin noted that Japan and Korea have a relatively more mature financial regulatory system so Alpha Intelligence can replicate its success in Taiwan in the two countries. In comparison, financial regulations in Vietnam and Thailand are still developing and financial institutions there embrace innovative fintech applications. This helped Alpha Intelligence win the first partnership deal in Vietnam. In the future, Alpha Intelligence will export its other products in the form of modules so as to capture the immense market opportunities in Asia
