How Medius AI is digitizing collections to help India’s NPA crisis

The AI-powered collection intelligence platform uses predictive technology to help banks identify and reduce NPA

 March 21: Medius AI, a collection intelligence platform, is pioneering digital debt management and NPA (non-performing assets) resolution for banks in India. Launched in 2021 by Nitin Purswani, Medius AI aims to revolutionize the lending industry by decreasing the volume of bad loans and NPA across the sector. Rooted in the idea to equip banks with actionable insights, Medius AI is helping overcome the intensifying crisis of NPAs that has significantly grown after the Covid-19 outbreak. 

Medius AI delivers artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to lenders. Even as digitization continues to transform the banking industry, debt collection operations remain very manual, and archaic medium AI helps to improve recovery rates by restoring values from past due accounts. Banks may outsource debt management to Medius AI, which uses a tech-first approach to help unlock the potential of AI and ML for behavioural analysis and predictive models. Banks benefit from a 30% increase in operational efficiency, a 15% increase in recovery rate, and the ability to manage 3x more cases using Medius AI. Several data points are used to predict a delinquent borrower’s recovery chances. This is done by segregating and segmenting customers and collection based on exposure, risk, and behavioural dimensions, along with capacity and willingness to pay, preferred contact method, and preferred channels of interaction. Etc.  

Nitin, the company’s founder and CEO who comes with a deep understanding of technology, says, “The core of any banking business runs on three pillars – distribution, operations and recovery. While many fintech start-ups in the past decade have focused on the first two, the final frontier of this business – collections and recovery – has remained under-invested. Sadly, the collections industry has been saddled with painful, low-value workflows and poor customer experience. Despite this massive shift in consumer behaviour, consumer credit collections are often still highly focused on the outbound call centre model, with optimization across alternative channels still limited. We are strategically utilizing digitisation in conjunction with traditional banking systems to solve the NPA crisis at scale. Ever since the pandemic, the banks have written off about Rs 2.2 lakh crore of bad loans. The conventional method of debt collection through tele-callers and field agents often results in friction and sabotages customer experience. With our tech-based solution, we have an early mover advantage to integrate higher transparency and symmetry into the process.” 

According to the RBI report, the NPA could jump to 9.5 per cent or higher by September 2022 as a result of expected increases in stressed assets and loan costs. Since the inception of the company, over 15 banks & NBFCs have used Medius AI and have been able to improve the recovery rate by 17%. We provide the solution for every stage of debt management, which makes it easier for us to take action on risk accounts. Medius AI also assists banks with automated legal workflows by sending thousands of legal notices in minutes, providing an internal team with a bird’s eye view of the entire collection and legal cases, allowing for faster decision making. 

Nitin further adds, “The pandemic wreaked havoc on the society, forcing us all to embrace digitization. We recognized the need for such a solution and began researching and diving deeper into the market. We discovered that to prevent, rather than reduce, nonperforming assets, banks will require an AI and analytics capacity stack that delivers intelligent and personalized solutions. The Medius AI is all about increasing efficiency reducing costs, time, and risk. Bringing down NPA and bad debts is aligned to our organisation’s larger vision, making the economy stronger and more resilient, and helping banks overcome the operational and manual challenges associated with the debt collection process.”

 The Way Ahead 

We’ve witnessed tremendous growth in the last year and are optimistic about the future. Our objective is to entirely automate and optimize the collection industry, thereby strengthening the financial institutions in our country. We understand that this is a long term vision & will need support from the right set of investors & we are, therefore, in the process of closing our first round of fundraising. Over the next 12 months, we will be onboarding 50+ well known financial institutions, including private & public sector banks & leading NBFC.