ZestFinance Receives Funding from Baidu to Fuel Development of Search-Based Underwriting Technology
July 18 2016 - 12:05AM
Business Wire
Companies working together to transform
financial services in China
ZestFinance announced today that it has received a strategic
investment from Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), the leading Chinese
language Internet search provider. ZestFinance is a Los
Angeles-based company that uses machine learning to transform vast
amounts of complex data into credit scores. Artificial intelligence
experts and data scientists at both companies plan to work together
to apply ZestFinance’s underwriting technology to Baidu’s search,
location, and payment data in order to improve credit scoring
decisions in China.
“At ZestFinance, our mission is to make fair and transparent
credit available to everyone,” said Douglas Merrill, Founder and
CEO of ZestFinance. “This investment from Baidu will help further
our mission, particularly in the fast-growing Chinese credit
market. We’re thrilled to work with Baidu to turn search data into
credit data.”
In emerging markets such as China, consumer credit data is
generally unavailable, as building consumer credit history is at a
nascent stage. Baidu’s rich user search data will be valuable for
loan underwriting and assessing credit risk. The ZestFinance
platform is highly applicable to emerging markets because it
accurately underwrites people who lack credit history.
“ZestFinance's unique ability to analyze and process complex,
disparate data to make accurate credit decisions is very valuable
to the Chinese credit market, where a centralized credit scoring
system has yet to emerge,” said Tony Yip, Global Head of
Investment, Mergers and Acquisitions at Baidu. “ZestFinance will be
an important technology partner for Baidu going forward, and we
look forward to working together to help transform the financial
services market in China.”
ZestFinance is one of the fastest growing financial technology
startups in the United States and licenses its platform to
companies across a variety of industries globally. The company’s
technology runs dozens of mathematical models in parallel to make
timely, accurate underwriting decisions, without human
intervention.
About ZestFinance
ZestFinance, Inc. applies its unique credit-decisioning
technology platform — based on data science and machine learning —
to help lenders effectively predict credit risk so they can provide
lower cost credit to people. The company also uses its technology
to provide convenient, online loans to consumers. ZestFinance was
founded in 2009 by Douglas Merrill and a team of former Google
employees with the mission of making fair and transparent credit
available to everyone. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles,
California. For more information, visit www.ZestFinance.com.
About Baidu
Baidu, Inc. is the leading Chinese language Internet search
provider. As a technology-based media company, Baidu aims to
provide the best and most equitable way for people to find what
they're looking for. In addition to serving individual Internet
search users, Baidu provides an effective platform for businesses
to reach potential customers. Baidu's ADSs trade on the NASDAQ
Global Select Market under the symbol "BIDU". Currently, ten ADSs
represent one Class A ordinary share.
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for ZestFinanceZestFinance,
Inc.Jenny Galitz McTighe,
323-450-3073press@zestfinance.comorCutline CommunicationsMegan
Lamb, 703-926-5292megan@cutline.comorfor
BaiduBaiduintlcomm@baidu.com
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