ZestFinance Democratizes Payday Loans Using Tech: Founder Douglas Merrill Explains How
30 Million Americans take out a payday loan every year. With upwards of 400% annual interest rates (APR), they’ve paid over 8 Billion dollars in fees alone. It’s big business: There are 25,000 payday loan stores in the United States – more stores than McDonalds and Starbucks combined! Google’s former Chief Information Officer/financial innovator, Douglas Merrill, saw a way to apply his expertise to help democratize the lending market. After a financial crisis hit his family, Merrill founded Zest Finance to level the playing field of money-lending by using technology to help judge character. In this A TOTAL DISRUPTION episode, Merrill takes us behind the scenes to see how Zest Finance is revolutionizing how individuals are evaluated and approved for payday loans – empowering over 100,000 people to survive and thrive.
In the past, the process of getting a payday loan was a far more personal experience. People talked with a credit officer who knew them by name. These days, it has now become quite impersonal, as applicants are judged by their FICO score, essentially reduced to a number on a spreadsheet. Many good people are either rejected or get highly unfavorable rates. Merrill and his team are putting the personal back into the loaning process while increasing efficiency, using technology.
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