Problem Statement 2

Consumer-consented and secure credit data portability

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are vital to the global economy, yet many face significant barriers to accessing finance. Forty percent of sub-Saharan Africa SMEs identify lack of financing as their biggest challenge to growth and innovation, both domestically and internationally. Estimates put the region’s funding gap at exceeding USD 140 billion. Traditional financial products, such as letters of credit and supply chain financing, are often inaccessible to SMEs due to outdated processes, excessive paperwork, and limited digital data portability.
.
Open finance can address these issues through secure cross-border credit data portability solutions. Over 70 jurisdictions regulate open finance and data with varied standards and frameworks, but the focus largely remains on domestic ecosystems, leaving cross-border data portability underdeveloped. Bilateral approaches risk creating fragmented frameworks, limiting scalability and efficiency. Interoperability must take center stage to overcome these challenges.
.
For reference, this problem statement is looking for solutions that enable consumer-consented and secure credit data sharing through secure methods such as encrypted APIs, enabling financial institutions and third-party providers to establish mutual trust and facilitate credit data exchange across borders in a safe, seamless, and trusted environment. Solutions may consider the use of encrypted data processes and other privacy enhancing technologies to protect customer privacy while still enabling the collection, processing, analysis, and sharing of their data protocols should ensure that information is used only for the purposes and duration defined and agreed by the user.
.
To clarify, this problem statement calls for solutions that address technological challenges such as navigating diverse digital environments across jurisdictions. However, policy concerns – such as the varying regulatory landscapes and differing data protection regimes – are outside the scope of this problem statement.
.
Innovative technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) may be explored to enable real-time credit scoring and workflow automation. Sharing knowledge through technologies such as federated learning can also be used to develop collaborative AI models across different regions without sharing raw data.