News and views

Technology and innovation

Date article published: 22/08/2012 Read original article >

In August 2012 the Wall Street Journal published an interesting piece on the future of banking, alternative forms of lending and “the power and disruption the internet brings.”

It described Wonga as the “the poster child of financial start-ups” and features a quote from the Chairman of Wonga, Robin Klein.

"What Wonga has done is to apply technology to areas of banking not thought of before, like making a lending decision," he said. "We don't have hordes of people looking through documents. We have hordes of PhDs refining our algorithms. We can make decisions faster and in an automated way."

Wonga’s view

Wonga is a technology business – a digital finance company that provides an alternative form of online and mobile lending. Of course our core purpose is to provide loans but the beating heart of the company is a technological one.

As Mike Lavern, CEO of The Currency Cloud, says in this article “bank services are vulnerable to disruption because their monolithic structures are being dismantled through technology.”

Technology is allowing agile businesses like Wonga to take traditional business models and turn them upside down.

Yes it’s about speed and streamlined structures but fundamentally it’s also about developing a service that is ‘fit for purpose’ for what people actually want – rather than what suits an outdated and traditional business model.

Hidden costs, slow decisions and lack of control have all led to distrust in the financial services sector, so Wonga has instead been built on convenience, speed and – crucially – transparency.

The point that is so often missed in the debate surrounding short-term credit is that customers LIKE the service Wonga provides.

92% of customers would recommend our service to a friend and, when asked to describe how they felt about using Wonga, the most common response in a recent survey was “in control.”

One size fits nobody when it comes to how people use credit, and technology is at last enabling innovation, competition and choice to thrive in the finance sector.