Omnisient, a South African fintech that enables the rapid sharing, discovery, and monetisation of data for financial inclusion, has won Gold for Data Insights and Silver for Social Impact Marketing at the 2023 Smarties Awards.
The Smarties is an annual competition honouring outstanding innovation and creativity resulting in significant business impact.
According to the World Bank, 1.7 billion people lack access to formal financial services due to their lack of a credit history. These “credit invisible” individuals face significant challenges in obtaining essential resources such as housing, education, healthcare, and capital to start businesses, leaving them vulnerable to loan sharks and high-interest rates.
Omnisient’s winning Data Insights and Social Impact Marketing entries were for its ground-breaking work with a leading African grocery retailer and local banks to help extend credit to unbanked or “credit invisible” individuals who would otherwise be declined due to lack of credit history.
Omnisient’s Gold Award for Data Insights and Silver Award for Social Impact Marketing
The platform’s built-in advanced analytics enabled the banks and the retailer to share and analyse consumer data securely, ethically, and in a manner that complies with global consumer privacy regulations. As a result, the banks were able to develop and validate an alternative way of credit scoring unbanked people based on shopping behaviour that is 40% more effective than their current models and has brought the availability of financial products to 3.2 million new people.
Jon Jacobson, CEO of Omnisient, stated, “We are grateful for the recognition this award gives us for the impact our technology is having on growing financial inclusion in Africa. By overcoming the privacy and security challenges associated with data collaboration between businesses, our technology is accelerating the formation of ground-breaking data collaboration partnerships between the financial industry and retail, telecommunications, healthcare industries and loyalty programmes care that lead to life-changing breakthroughs for millions.”
All Smarties Award winners, including Omnisient’s gold-winning Social Impact Marketing entry, will be entered into the global Mobile Marketing Associations’ Business Impact Index (BII) Awards.
About the author
Julian Diaz is Omnisient’s CMO. Julian is a B2B tech marketer for start-ups with over 20 years of experience marketing in USA, UK, Europe and South Africa.
Share