The State Bank of India (SBI) is planning to launch a loan product, SAFAL, focused mainly on organic cotton growers who don’t have any credit history, according to SBI managing director C S Setty, who recently told a financial technology conference organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) that the bank is using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in a big way to generate business.
“We want to go beyond this so-called retail segment and reach out to… like farmers. Today I am not only giving crop loans… We are about to launch a product called Safe and Fast Agriculture Loan (SAFAL). There is a company which brought all the organic cotton growers and created a database on the basis of blockchain,” Setty was quoted as saying by a news agency.
Any buyer of this cotton across the world can check whether the farmer actually is growing the organic cotton, he said.
“We are just taking the data and providing the credit linkage to them because they don’t have the credit history. They are not borrowers of crop loans but we have the ability to pick them up because the technology has brought them together and provided the market visibility to them,” he added.