Costin Mincovici

Chief Credit Officer, tbi bank

Supernova Award Category: 
Data to Decisions
The Organization: 

tbi bank is a mobile-first challenger bank in Southeast Europe and regional leader in alternative payment solutions, building an ecosystem by combining financing and shopping to address customers’ needs. It focuses on helping merchants to grow their business as well as providing consumers with financial products and services that make their lives easier. tbi bank currently operates in Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Germany, and Lithuania. Through various digital channels and trusted partnerships with 20,000 merchant locations, tbi has a customer base of 2 million clients and issued nearly 550,000 loans in 2022. Its business model and customer-focused approach resulted in becoming one of the most profitable and efficient banks in the region.

The Problem: 

tbi bank sought a solution to automate its credit assessment process so lending decisions could be made quickly and more efficiently. The bank was looking for a solution that offered ease of use, and the ability to easily integrate with existing systems and comply with relevant regulations and industry standards, such as GDPR, to ensure the protection of customer data.

The bank was looking for purpose-built technology designed to outpace market evolution and help the company scale its loan processing operations, while offering a personalized and rewarding customer experience, to enable tbi to maintain its rank as an innovative and disruptive financial services player.

The Solution: 

The objective was to build a credit decisioning center of excellence using next-gen technology to bring data, AI and risk decisioning capabilities to enable tbi to make more accurate credit decisions in real-time, with the flexibility to iterate, expand, and scale on a global level, without extensive IT resources. Furthermore, the solution needed to support its wide-ranging regulatory compliance requirements spanning multiple countries/regions and product lines.

The Results: 

With automated decisioning processes and the ability to quickly implement changes via use of a dynamic low-code platform, tbi bank can offer clients credit decisions in real-time at scale, processing more than 7 million applications annually globally, with a decisioning engine that is efficiently managed with only three FTEs for the three markets tbi operates in.

By providing faster and more accurate lending decisions, tbi is providing customers with the best experience while reducing risk. tbi bank has achieved significant market differentiation by offering the speed and convenience consumers require. The bank can also now more easily tailor lending products and terms to meet the specific needs of customers.

Improved Capacity: The bank can now perform underwriting quickly and at scale, enabling tbi to grow its business from less than 500,000 credit applications annually to 7 million applications annually – for a 1,400% capacity improvement.

Improved Efficiency: The bank can now implement changes in minutes, thanks to the use of low-code functionality.

Real-Time Decisioning: The bank has improved customer experience through tailored offerings and streamlined credit approvals.

Regulatory Compliance: The bank can confidently manage compliance operations, with the ability to adapt very quickly to updates and implement needed changes quickly, for best-practice compliance and governance.

Metrics: 

Some of the metrics that tbi is tracking related to this initiative are credit application volume/scalability, decisioning timeframe and throughput, and IT agility, efficiency and operations costs.

  • Real-time decisions are made in milliseconds/seconds.
  • tbi now implements changes to underwriting flows in minutes to hours vs weeks to months using expensive IT capacities to implement hardcoded changes.
  • tbi has experienced no increase in its underwriting headcount over the last 3 years, although the CAGR of incoming applications has grown by more than 25% per annum.
  • tbi now processes more than 7M applications annually with no downtime – a 1,400% capacity improvement over its previous application volume of less than 500,000 credit applications.
The Technology: 

Used by financial services organizations in 50 countries worldwide and powering 4 million transactions annually, Provenir’s AI-Powered Data and Decisioning Platform brings together three essential components – decisioning data and AI. The platform provides a cohesive risk ecosystem to enable smarter decisions across the entire customer lifecycle – with diverse data for deeper insights, auto-optimized decisions, and a continuous feedback loop for constant improvement.

Disruptive Factor: 

By improving credit decisioning, the bank has been able to drastically expand its underwriting capacity, while keeping processing costs low and effectively managing risk and compliance requirements. This has supercharged the bank’s growth.

tbi bank’s financial results for 2022 show an all-time record net profit of EUR 35.5M – 29% higher than the EUR 27.5M achieved in 2021. The bank’s revenue grew by 30% to EUR 161M. This allowed operating profit for 2022 to reach EUR 122M with 28% year-on-year growth.

In 2022, tbi bank received 1.3M financing applications in Romania, Greece and Bulgaria and disbursed nearly 550,000 payment plans in the amount of EUR 726M – 34% more compared to 2021.

tbi bank’s loan portfolio increased to EUR 778M at the end of December 2022 (43% growth compared to 2021). In 2022, General Purpose loans in Bulgaria grew by nearly 50% compared to just 20% growth in 2021.

 

Shining Moment: 

tbi bank is a regional leading innovator in credit assessment automation, with a commitment to leveraging cutting-edge technology to revolutionize lending operations. The bank's success in achieving significant market differentiation and its remarkable financial performance are testaments to its unwavering pursuit of excellence and its ability to challenge the status quo.

About tbi bank

tbi bank is a mobile-first challenger bank in Southeast Europe, operating in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Germany, and Lithuania. Via digital channels and trusted partnerships with nearly 20,000 merchant locations, tbi serves 2 million clients and issued 550,000 loans in 2022. Its business model and customer-focused approach has made it one of the most profitable and efficient banks in the region.