[Community Expert] Nicole Van Der Tuin, Co-Founder and CEO at First Access
Happy Friday — we are delighted to announce another amazing LendLedger Community Expert!
Nicole Van Der Tuin is Co-Founder and CEO of First Access, a New York-based fintech company recently ranked among Entrepreneur’s 100 Brilliant Companies.
Using its smart platform, First Access enables data-driven credit across emerging markets, allowing lenders in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to collect data from multiple sources and automate how this data is processed against existing credit policies, scorecards, and algorithms. Its real-time analysis provides insights on loan origination, staff and customers, even for borrowers who have never had a bank account or mobile phone.
Nicole’s work at First Access has been featured in major publications including The Financial Times, Forbes, The Stanford Social Innovation Review, and American Banker. Combined, the experience of the First Access team spans 58 markets.
Nicole’s Insights
- First Access has worked with microfinance, fintech, pay-go energy and other types of data-driven and inclusive lenders. Nicole’s experience designing processes and analytics to meet their objectives is of great value as LendLedger develops its protocols and basic software. Given its focus on helping these organizations become more data-driven in their lending, First Access is also a very strong candidate to be a key LendLedger user in the many markets in which it works.
- Nicole’s early work with First Access included developing data-driven analytic models for lending using mobile recharge and cellphone usage data. Her and her team’s early experience in Tanzania and other markets using this dataset can add value as LendLedger develops APIs for it and encourages telecom operators to participate in the network as data providers.
- Whereas LendLedger benefits early on from the Asia and East Africa lending experience of its founders and advisors, Nicole adds to this with experience in a range of other emerging markets including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Madagascar, Senegal, Brazil, and China.
About Nicole
Prior to founding First Access seven years ago, Nicole worked with the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), creating a policy strategy and conducting the largest talent/salary survey of impact investors and capacity development providers in emerging markets. She also assisted in the design and launch of MicroWorld, part of the PlaNet Finance group, which provides financial support to inclusive finance institutions reaching underserved customers in Senegal, Cambodia, Peru, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Madagascar and Tajikistan.
Nicole’s mission has been to reduce the cost of capital in informal markets. She has been working towards this goal for thirteen years living on five continents, and speaks French, Portuguese, Mandarin, Spanish, and basic Swahili.
To find out more about the LendLedger Community
Take a look at our Overview Paper: http://lendledger.io/images/LendLedger-Overview-Optimized.pdf
Read our Technical Paper: http://lendledger.io/images/LendLedger_TechPaper.pdf
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