The global economy is undergoing a remarkable transformation driven by the rapid proliferation of digital technologies and the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
The services that banking offers today already use a large number of these advances; For example, when we try to resolve a question about our account status and we communicate with customer services through a chat, the person who will automatically answer us will be a virtual assistant, which was designed to answer general customer questions, allowing for faster responses, 24/7 operation, and decreased personnel costs for financial institutions.
How does a virtual assistant operate? These automatic response systems were designed with a computational language, through algorithms, that allows them to analyze the data they receive from the users themselves, from the Internet or by exchanging information with other devices and thus learn about the decisions that the user it takes, with the aim of solving problems, simulating what a person could do in real life.
Additionally, this technology can predict behavior based on the history of decisions that a person has made, or considering some economic or demographic data, the possible response that would be had to certain events or with respect to financial obligations contracted, such as the probability of a default on a credit card, or the estimation of the possible response to a crisis situation for the payment of personal loans or mortgages.
These capacities are very important to resolve many of the limitations that financial institutions have today when granting their loans, especially towards groups in society that for years have had low or no participation, as is the case with some groups of women, adults older or indigenous.
In the case of women, some of the requirements that are requested to request a loan are the title of ownership of some real estate that can serve as collateral or have had some financial product; However, in the first case, it is estimated that in Mexico only 28% of private homes have deeds in the name of a woman, unlike the 56% that are owned by men (Inmujeres 2022).
If we consider credit history, 61% of women and 74% of men in our country have had access to some formal financial product, that is, they have had a savings account (42.6% versus 56.4%, respectively) or have purchased some type of insurance. (16.4% versus 26.1%, respectively) (ENIF,2021).
The reasons why these differences exist may be cultural, less access to formal economic systems or disparity in financial education issues, to name a few.
Now, what would be the advantage of incorporating a greater number of women into the financial sector through AI to change the processes and requirements for granting credit? According to a study carried out by Oliver Wyman in 2020, if women had the same proportion of mortgage or consumer loans as men, globally, this could generate an increase of approximately $65 trillion dollars in interest and commissions for financial institutions; and, if we consider the loans granted to micro and small businesses led by women, this figure could be around $30 billion, without counting the additional businesses that could be generated, such as online payment operations or the opening of new ones. accounts.
Therefore, the use of new processes based on AI for granting credit would be a viable option so that those women, who are at a disadvantage when applying for a loan, can obtain it even without having the traditional requirements; since financing could be granted, considering a projection of its behavior through the use of models developed with this new technology.
This change is not only for the benefit of the grantors, but, above all, it will favor the financial inclusion of women and in the long term it will be able to trigger health and financial well-being for them and their families.
The author is Professor and Western Region Leader of the FAIR Center for Financial Access, Inclusion and Research.
Contact: fair.tec.mx
