SC Ventures launches digital onboarding platform Appro in UAE

Standard Chartered’s fintech investment arm, SC Ventures, has announced the launch of Appro, a fintech start-up that digitises the retail banking user journey, in the United Arab Emirates.

The bank-agnostic platform is designed to reduce application times for retail banking products such as credit cards and personal loans from several hours to three minutes, SC Ventures claims.

Customers will only be required to complete a single application per product, with Appro drawing on the required data from each application and sharing it securely with other participating banks.

Participating banks can then utilise these data points to present relevant products to qualifying customers using a unique algorithm based on the customer’s indicated preferences.

The banks also receive the pre-processed applications for each qualified customer, which include all necessary bank onboarding activities such as know your customer (KYC), customer due diligence, credit worthiness assessments and fraud checks.

Founded by three former Standard Chartered retail bankers, Iftekhar Salim, Tarek Osman and Antofelix Rajan, Appro was incubated at SC Ventures and has received early-stage investment on three occasions.

The platform will initially enable applications for credit cards and personal loans upon launch in the UAE, with the company looking to expand its offerings to include mortgage loans, car loans, current and saving accounts and wealth management products in 2023.

The fintech plans to scale across the wider Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), followed by markets in the Asia Pacific region including Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia and India.