tbi bank contributes to the development of the fintech entrepreneurial landscape and launches a pilot project
tbi bank announced the start of a pilot project with fintech startup Prime Dash, to help emerging Romanian fintech startups grow and scale faster. The project is part of the Visa Innovation Program partnership platform, run by Eleven Ventures, one of the leading early-stage venture capital companies in Southeast Europe.
The Visa Innovation Program is a partnership platform that helps emerging fintech startups develop faster by giving them access to Visa’s technology infrastructure and its global network of partners and customers. At the same time, the platform engages various fintech industry players such as investors, advisors, mentors and domain experts with the ultimate goal of fast-tracking the companies to pilot projects and commercial agreements.
“The visa innovation program brought unprecedented value to our company. Through our collaboration with Eleven Ventures, we were able to improve our value proposition, tailor the product to different customer personas and experiment with business models. We were introduced to new customers, but most importantly, we were able to sign our first pilot project in less than two months, says Catalin Rus, co-founder and COO of Prime Dash.
Prime Dash is a fast-growing fintech startup from Romania and a participant in the Visa Innovation Program Cohort 4, powered by Eleven Ventures. It leverages AI and ML technologies to facilitate real-time financial decisions for SMEs and via automation to allow them to receive hyper-personalized credit products from financial institutions.
“Innovation always happens through experiments and with participants who have the right attitude and want to create new processes or improve customer journeys, without worrying about the final result of the experiment. For us, it was a valuable experience to work with a financial institution that has the right mindset for such training and with a startup that wants to improve its technology in this way. This is the fastest pilot in the Visa Innovation Program’s history, happening in less than 2 months from introduction to contract”, said Veselina Markova, Fintech Lead at Eleven Ventures and Visa Innovation Program Manager.
To tbi bank, the pilot project is an opportunity to improve the existing process of SME credit scoring via automation and to facilitate the development of hyper-personalized SME credit products via lead generation. Rolling out a pilot project with a financial institution, for a start-up, requires a lot of resources and can be a long process – the sales cycle usually exceeds twelve months.
“On tbi bank, we believe that true innovation comes from an open mindset. We have established this strength internally within our team, but have also learned that you can grow by relying on partners who dare to challenge the norms. We saw that spark the first time we met Prime Dash and are excited to have experienced the fastest pilot in Visa Innovation Program history together. Now we are keen to see the results for our customers, says Petr Baron, CEO of tbi.
This complex program allows participants to carry out rapid experiments in a safe environment, reducing this time to less than two months and at the same time providing a lot of insight for future improvements. The pilot project between tbi bank and Prime Dash, which happened in less than two months from the first introduction to contract signing, proves the fact that banks can take advantage of the fintech innovation and trial-test and learn from these experiments in a very fast way, which can help them better serve their customers. The end goal of the pilot is for tbi bank to reduce the time spent on financial risk assessment and monitoring via automation and better serve its SME customers with specially developed credit offers based on their individual profile.
