Julio Lavalle for MiBolsillo App

We help financial institutions in LATAM by providing lots of low risk clients through an AI-Powered Financial Advisor that consumes alternative data and gives, to the formerly unbanked, access to the financial services they are looking for.

👋🏽Hola/ Oi/ Hello from Rio as we wrap up Rio Innovation Week to promote our digital financial advisor widget in Brazil. Some of you seem to have missed our quarterly updates as they must have slipped to spam, we've made the necessary fixes to be back to your inbox.

If you're looking for a theme song for this update it'd be The Open Road by Hollow Coves, we're embracing open finance and leading it as a platform of platforms, here's how:

• 4/4 paying clients with renewed contracts for 2023
• 2 PoCs to be implemented in Q4 2022, and 3 in Q1 2023
• Revenue increased by 30% YoY compared to Q3 2022
• Increased underwriting capacity, from 250 loan leads/mo to 2150/mo. At an average approval rate of 60%, loan ticket size of US$700 and a success fee of 1%, we could expect and additional US$10K/mo. Our aim is to 10X this capacity by June 2023.

• In early 2022 we joined the Construtec Hub in Peru, a conglomerate to provide quality housing for the un/underbanked. After a successful PoC with Habitat for Humanity + local developer Menorca consuming alternative data from users, where MiBolsillo facilitated 7 construction loans through its alternative credit score, we are moving to phase 2 to reach US$ 250K in disbursed loans. We are also replicating this project in Mexico with Habitat and Holcim to reach US$ 25K in housing improvement loans in phase I.

• A stronger presence in Mexico with 2 new agreements with local FIs: Financiera del Bienestar (nationwide remittance agency) and Acreimex (the biggest savings cooperative in Oaxaca). As I write this update @Ronald, our CIO, is at the largest micro finance event led by ProDesarrollo Microfinanzas with 130 MFIs in their portfolio.

• Solid validation in the Proptech sector + featured in an IADB paper. Not only are we active in construction focused events to promote the case with Habitat such as the one I was part of last week with New Story, our work to put fintech + construction players together towards better quality housing and financing access wasrecognized as a regional case in a recent paper.

• We're one of the 10 AI-based startups chosen by IADB to promote financial inclusion solutions with a gender lens, last month was full of bootcamps to help us build a solid proposal with the potential of co investment.

• We're launching a hybrid SAFE + revenue share investment round to provide investors with real time payback as we scale. I'll be reaching out individually to get feedback and share more.

• Innovate Peru provided us with a US US$50K grant to scale our FA (Financial Advisor Widget) as part of the Peruvian Dynamic Business program.

• Integration to Prometeo, providing us with a variety of financial data to keep building our financial advisor and credit score on top of it. Next step is to target digital wallets. 1st month of open banking connections in Peru surpassed expectations by 200%.

• Our loan request engine had a 25% submission rate only sowe sat with Dan Ariely to create a behavioral science approach to improve loan requests, the proposed new changes are proving a higher submission that aim to reach 75%.

• Investment options for our users in the making, launching in 2 weeks. After understanding there's a niche of our users looking for investment options, we partnered with Inv.io to add a couple of opportunities for our users to invest. This 3-month pilot is tied to a success fee.

• The v.2 of our AI-PFA is in full swing (AI Powered Financial Advisor for individuals & micro/small business owners). Check out the v.1 of its documentation and how it connects to 3rd party platforms. Also, put a face to the product here.

• Leading open finance in Peru and Mexico and in order to increase buy-in from more commercial partners we've created the Open Finance 'Pocket Talks' by MiBolsillo where our tech, data and product teams share on how data collection, processing and enrichment helps us to build an accurate engine of underwriting and financial advise.

• Preserving cash, times feel rough out there and want to make sure we are able to deal with uncertainty in the next semester, this is why we have downsized our core team from 12 to 8, tighter but without jeopardizing our ability to deliver.

• We're joining Techstars Foundercon in San Francisco the week of Nov 14. Also, we have a meeting with an investor in Miami on the week of the 21st. If you have any suggestions on Seed/Series A investors, fintech, LATAM focused and CVCs that might be useful to start the convo with in person, please send them our way.

• We're looking for platforms like TiendaDA, marketplaces, retailers and alike to implement our financial advisor widget to gather data and increase our ability for underwriting more leads. Connections across the region are always welcome.

• Based on our latest analysis 93% of the leads we take to FIs are new clients, huge potential for them since 67% of those have a high change to be approved for a loan. What would you tell big name FIs that are willing to test our financial advisor and loan origination engine but WITHOUT a success fee payment? any mix of strategies to persuade them to validate our business model is always helpful.

• LEF @ UTEC Ventures for all his support as we prepare to launch the first Open Finance community in Peru. Claudia Revilla @ ProDesarrollo for allowing our team to interact with the micro finance players in Mexico. Gema, Cindhy, Alejandro, Fernando, Elizabeth @Habitat Peru and Mexico for being MiBolsillo ambassadors with local players. Chris @ Fonbank, Techstars brother & classmate, always inspiring to have future of fintech chats whether it is by sharing a desk at WeWork unexpectedly or walking Vesper (his Greyhound). Finally, the IADB team led by Diana Trochez that served as useful resources to build a more inclusive solution to potentialize the data we gather towards reducing gender gaps.

Hope this update was helpful. Please feel free to reach out with feedback and ideas to [email protected] 

Enjoy Thanksgiving - if you celebrate. We'll be having fun advising our users across the region on Black Friday expenditure and originating working-capital loans for this end-of-year Christmas campaign 🤓

Abrazos/ abraços /hugs!
Julio Lavalle