Renaissant

Intro

Renaissant was born from the desire to create a solution that tackles system inequalities that have a social and financial impact for the unbanked. After deep research, we became aware of the potential of an often excluded and underserved market, represented by a large and steadily growing displaced population. The main findings relating to our primary serviceable market, were: • To-date there are 80M displaced people across the globe • By 2030, displaced people will become the fastest growing group with the most acute humanitarian needs • Humanitarian stakeholders will focus more on strengthening the resilience of the host communities • Displaced population are becoming urban, as conditions in the camps fail to improve • People are forced to move as a result of climate change

Additionally, market needs that we identified, position Renaissant as a tech-enabled solution to the below problems/barriers associated to integrating displaced people (and other unbanked groups) into modern digital financial systems:

Disparate, alternative data for unbanked-displaced populations is scarce & valuable
Many unbanked/underbanked do not trust financial systems or fear rejection from banks
Unbanked-underbanked are not limited to the developing countries
Current institutional cash-based response and loan methodologies are expensive, lack transparency
Institutional investment and donations capital exists but there is no reliable, traceable & outcomes-based tracking mechanism to tie it to the impact it has

Our aspiration - to proactively enable social and financial inclusion, sharing our data-driven insights to pave the way for financial delivery redesign, that is, more equitable, transparent and accessible banking products and services for all.

What it does

Renaissant connects different stakeholders: beneficiaries, NGOs, vendors and smartphone donors within a closed loop financial and digital tech-enabled ecosystem with its complete solution: a secure, cloud-based platform for donation management and distribution, a smartphone App that facilitates transparent and secure transactions for beneficiaries and approved network vendors with low costs and faster transaction times, and the provision of a refurbished/reprogrammed smartphone to beneficiaries (if one is required).

Our flexible cloud-based platform and app, supported by Finastra’s open API FusonFabric.cloud* offers customizable portals for Partners, Beneficiaries and Vendors, to deliver: - unique member dashboards - Financial and Demographic Tracking, Reporting, Analytics - ln leieu of a Credit Score, a Financial Accountability Rating via algorithm - Performance, operational improvement monitoring and analysis - Robust financial and population analytics

Additionally via open API, we leverage interoperable block chain infrastructure and digital tokenized assets to facilitate transactions and the authentication of digital and tangible goods.

(*Finastra FusionFabric.cloud tools: RoboSave, Fusion Analytics and Fusion Payment Insights.)

How we built it

The project Renaissant was built based on Design Thinking approach. The initial phase was about identifying insights by using the research data sets about unbanked population. The Brainstorm process was based on “Analogous World” where, again, it was about researching. Many ideas came out of it and they were inspired by the fact that financial inclusion is key for refugees to be able to rebuild their lives, but there were two important constraints: refugees cannot open a bank account because of lack of ID, and Financial Service Providers lack socio-economic data about refugees population to be able to provide appropriate services. Our market validation aimed at getting inputs about all the stakeholders involved in Renaissant: NGOs, vendors, FinTech and potential smartphone donors. First, we had the opportunity to interview the former Supply Chain Director of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. He confirmed that unfortunately refugee’s population is growing and funds are less and less available. Therefore NGOs and UN agencies have an increased pressure for improving accountability and transparency of their operations. He also highlighted the need for a simple solution that could improve the traceability and transparency of funding systems, which could increase fundraising. Second, we verified the potential to get donated smartphones from corporations and private owners. We ran a survey from which we got more than 140 responses from potential private donors about the willing to donate old but still operative smartphones for refurbishment. We also interviewed a vendor that works with blockchain. Lastly, we got the opportunity to interview Finastra that showed solid interest to provide solutions to unbanked. To conclude, we created a (demo) prototype of the App and the platform.

Challenges we ran into

Renaissant is a network-enabled system that connects different stakeholders. The main challenge we faced was in regards to translating a complex network into a simple solution with clear value proposition.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud of the results of our market validation, when we received positive feedback from the different stakeholders we interviewed or surveyed. This stage confirmed the pertinence of having Fintech solutions for displaced people and at that moment we knew that we were on the right track. The promise of scale and impact is significant, not only for the underserved, NGOs and donors, but also for banking institutions and Fintech companies who are looking to develop new products and services for an untapped market.

What we learned

We learned about the vast untapped market of unbanked population, especially displaced people. Refugees are displaced, but skilled and fiscally responsible, and are willing to start a new life once settled in a host country if properly and credibly supported. However, as a first step, they need their basic needs to be fulfilled. On the other hand, Financial Service Providers lack socio-economic data about refugee’s population to be able to provide appropriate services.

Financial inclusion is about enabling resilience and self-reliance.

What's next for Renaissant

The former Supply Chain Director of UNHCR mentioned about the need for a more sustainable assistance, in the form of microloans. This is confirmed by several articles about financial inclusion of refugees. The “Phase 2” for Renaissant consists of two aspects: (1) Adding services focused on the refugees that are in a more advanced stable displacement phase and are looking for financial independence. Example: funding system for microloans, (2) Scalability of our solution, hoping to implement it in all the continents and expand to all ubanked populations.