"It was high risk, but we are in the business of taking risks. It paid off dramatically.”
Richard Rotoye, Group Managing Director, Creditville
Richard Rotoye, Group Managing Director, Creditville
Creditville is a private lending institution specialising in loans to individuals and small businesses in Nigeria. It aims to become the country’s most dominant, efficient, and reliable provider of private lending services. Headquartered in the heart of Victoria Island, Lagos, today it boasts five branches across Nigeria.
Its range of products includes salary loans, car loans, hire purchase, and business loans. Creditville prides itself on basing its business on integrity, honesty, and transparency — accordingly, it was awarded “Most Trusted Customer Finance Company” at Africa’s Finance Awards in 2020.
It is particularly renowned for its efforts to level the playing field for women in Nigeria, offering loan products specifically aimed at removing obstacles to accessing funds for women.
In early 2020, Creditville was ready to begin its ambitious plans for expansion. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the company was faced with a choice: put its plans on hold, or press forward.
Richard Rotoye, Creditville’s Group Managing Director, recalls: “We decided to scale up our plans because we believed the lockdown would result in many lenders shutting down temporarily or exiting the market altogether. It was high risk, but we are in the business of taking risks. It paid off dramatically.”
To scale up, Creditville needed a robust, secure, scalable loan management platform which would grow as Creditville grew. “We talked to Oradian and chose their cloud-based system. If we had not taken that decision, we could not have scaled as fast as we did,” says Mr. Rotoye.
Crucially, Oradian gave Creditville the power to onboard new customers remotely. This was vital during the height of the pandemic, when people were trying to minimise social contact. But it also made the process more efficient, and much faster. “Oradian really helped us in the areas of customer acquisition, customer evaluation, and reporting. It helped our business grow,” he says.
“The first impact Oradian had on our business was speed,” says Mr. Rotoye. “The processing time from loan application to disbursement was reduced by at least 80%.”
Oradian also satisfied Creditville’s customers by giving them instant access to their balances and other information about their loan. “Before Oradian we had issues computing the principal, the interest to date, and other aspects of the loan history. Suddenly that became very, very easy,” says Mr. Rotoye.
“We’ve gone from manually checking customer balances in 24 hours to giving customers the ability to check their own balances instantly – and apply for new loans or top up existing ones.”
Mr. Rotoye says Oradian’s platform has improved customer acquisition and customer service. “It has also made it easier for us to scale our business,” he says.
This allowed Creditville to grow its loan portfolio by 86%, with an astonishing 114% increase in total loan accounts. In total, its number of clients has grown by 113%.
Oradian is helping Creditville dominate the gap between the smaller finance institutions and the commercial banks.
“Using mobile and digital technology, we are better to provide the same service as a commercial bank but faster and cheaper because we have lower overheads. And, of course, we offer the personal touch they often cannot,” he says.
Thanks to Oradian, customers can apply for loans and access their accounts from their own homes.
Mr. Rotoye says the next stage will be to use Oradian to instantly disburse loans electronically. The entire process from application to disbursement can then be done without the customer needing to call or visit one of the Creditville offices or meet one of their loan officers.
Oradian also helps Creditville move towards its aim of becoming a lifestyle finance provider. “Oradian provides us with a core banking platform designed to integrate with third-party applications so there are no limits to what we can achieve,” says Mr. Rotoye.
Scalable: grows with your business.
Affordable: our subscription-based model means economical pricing with no surprises.
Cloud-based: no need to buy and maintain servers and infrastructure.
Flexible: fast and easy to set up, configure, and change. Customise at the flick of a switch.
Low-bandwidth: designed for customers even in remote and rural areas. Works with 2G.
Easy to integrate: instantly plug in third-party applications using our powerful APIs.
Come and see the future with us. Talk to one of our core banking experts.