Thrissur/Mumbai: ESAF Small Finance Bank & Easy, mortgage tech start-up has entered into a strategic partnership to provide digital-first affordable home loans to home buyers. The catalyst for the partnership will be ESAF Small Finance Bank’s capability of serving low and mid-income group consumers and Easy’s technology. The partnership aims to provide loans to consumers within industry-leading turnaround time.
The partnership aims to utilize Easy’s technology and sourcing capabilities to strengthen ESAF Small Finance Bank’s secured lending in overlapping territories operated by both institutions. The partnership is the first Mortgage-as-a-Service (MaaS) deal in India and is the first step to Easy’s long-term goals of a neo-mortgage bank. Easy’s proprietary in-house artificial intelligence (“AI”) enabled technology will be utilized to ensure ESAF Small Finance Bank’s operational costs remain low and maximum market coverage through the phygital model.
“India is still at a very nascent stage when it comes to digitalization in the mortgage space. Mortgages amount to only 10% of India’s GDP and there is a long process of underwriting a home loan. With this association, we aim to make the entire process smooth for the end consumers and are confident that they will have a great experience and faster access to capital in fulfilling their dream of owning a house.” – says Praveen Agrawal, CEO of Easy.
“We are glad to partner with Easy to offer proprietary in-house AI-enabled technology to our customers and facilitate them with the ease of digital services. We believe that this partnership can bridge the financial inclusion gaps that are left to be addressed, through better and faster home loans.” – says Paul Thomas, Managing Director & CEO of ESAF Small Finance Bank.
The deal was exclusively advised by Positron Advisors for both Easy & ESAF Bank.