ING Belgium to re-assess and enhance NPL processes for Flowcast

By Megha Bhattacharya

ING Belgium has teamed up with Flowcast for launching a pilot test related to the preventive and proactive possibilities for the end to end Non-Performing Loans process. ING Belgium, as a part of the partnership, will invest an additional $3 million into Flowcast. The FinTech startup Flowcast provides AI solutions to modernise credit and collection. ING previously co-led Flowcast’s Series A investment round. The ING investment brings the total capital raised by Flowcast to over $10m.

“Credit decisioning is a core capability of ING, which we are continuously seeking to strengthen in order to improve our offering to ING’s clients. We believe that machine learning and alternative data capabilities such as those developed and refined by Flowcast will shape the future of financial services and is therefore a strategic priority,” said Frederic Hofmann, managing director of ING Ventures.

“Our service allows the bank to be proactive about its lending portfolio, reducing costs, customer churn, and improving the borrower experience,” said Ken So, co-founder and CEO of Flowcast. “It’s a great example of how our credit analysis platform is modernizing both sides of the credit marketplace.”

Flowcast develops high-performing models for financial institutions with an aim to improve customer experience, reduce levels of customers in arrears or default, as well as reduce loan-loss provisioning costs.

Stephanie van Avesaat, head of ING Labs Brussels said, “ING Belgium is currently running a pilot with Flowcast to further test the customer satisfaction and customer impact of this proactive approach, with the goal of supporting local retail customers across mortgages.”

ING recently announced that it will be withdrawing from the retail banking market in the Czech Republic. ING has been present in the Czech retail banking market for more than 20 years, offering savings accounts and mutual funds. Currently, ING serves around 375,000 local retail customers. Globally, ING supports more than 39 million retail and wholesale customers in 40 markets.