Fijian tech firm ITGalax will be working closely with the Fiji Development Bank (FDB) to bring to life its winning Artificial Intelligence-based chatbot solution concept.
ITGalax was one of five winners in the recent Pacific Islands Fintech Innovation Challenge 2022.
Its AI-based bot will help streamline and digitise FDB’s customer support operations, said ITGalax co-founder and Director Business Development, Vipin Narendran.
“As you know, FDB is a development bank with a clear mandate to offer economic development to Fiji. FDB offers products to support SMEs, agriculture, women and other marginalised sections. Being the only development bank in Fiji, they receive enquiries on their product offerings. Any of their new products are met with huge response from interested customers,” Narendran told Islands Business.
However, some key challenges persist such as overworked customer service staff, information dissemination, online lead generation and off-hour support, and these, said Narendran, are areas that the chatbot solution will address.
“The bot will be customised based on FDB requirements. The system can also be integrated with the core banking system at FDB to offer account specific information in a secure manner.”
The Pacific Islands Fintech Innovation Challenge 2022 was launched in May by the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) to encourage fintech solutions that tackle the challenges of financial inclusion and digital payments in several Pacific Island and Asian countries.
Five challenge areas were featured, attracting 51 fintech companies from the Pacific and other parts of the world. Of these, eleven were shortlisted and the five winners announced after a competitive three-day challenge in Singapore last month.
Winners were given funding grants of up to US$50,000 each to work with their implementing partners – financial institutions in Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga – to bring their fintech concepts to life.
Small Pacific Islands market size means it is costly to build and roll out Fiji-specific solutions. As such, the grant is a welcome boost for ITGalax.
“The actual amount to be disbursed will only be decided upon finalisation of our proposal. US$50,000 was the maximum amount allocated for the challenge,” said Narendran.
“The incoming fund will be used for implementation, customisation and ongoing support. We are also turning the solution into a subscription-based cloud solution and enhancing it with additional functionalities. The fund will be used for all of the above.”
The fintech challenge has also raised the visibility of how technological advances can enhance financial services in Pacific Island countries, potentially transforming digital strategies for businesses.
At no other time was this more evident than during COVID.
“We strongly believe that digital and fintech solutions are great enablers and help businesses cut across boundaries and reach people. We have seen how digital payments resulted in mass assistance disbursals during COVID,” said Narendran.
“Through our association with the Fiji National Provident Fund, we have first-hand experience of the impact digital and fintech solutions can offer to the people. The myFNPF mobile app is a great example of how technology was used to offer assistance during challenging times such as COVID. More and more people have started making online payments, payments through QR pay and such. All these clearly demonstrate that we have already started using fintech solutions for our day-to-day transactions. We believe over the next few years this will become the norm.”
UNCDF Regional Manager Pacific, Bram Peters said the winning fintechs will collaborate with implementing partners to test and deploy their digital solutions over the next 9-12 months.
“We’re pleased with the outcome of the fintech challenge. The 3-day event saw multiple stakeholders engage on key topics around access to finance and financial inclusion. I am confident that these collaborations will greatly benefit the Pacific people and their institutions.”
The Pacific Islands Fintech Innovation Challenge winners
Global Psytech (Malaysia).
Challenge: Improving access to financial products and services. Implementing partners: Tonga Development Bank, National Bank of Samoa.
ITGalax Solutions Pte Ltd (Fiji).
Challenge: Digitising customer service. Implementing partner: Fiji Development Bank.
YABX (India).
Challenge: Increasing usage of financial products and services. Implementing partner: Solomon Islands National Provident Fund
MHITS Ltd (Australia).
Challenge: Streamlining foreign exchange. Implementing partner: Vodafone Fiji
Windcave (Australia).
Challenge: Enabling e-commerce and in-person POS merchant payment service. Implementing partner: Home Finance Corporation, Fiji; National Bank of Samoa.
