ROSE HALL, St James — The Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ) has announced a pilot programme aimed at making financing more accessible by utilising technology to determine creditworthiness.

The revelation was made by the bank’s managing director, Dr David Lowe, during his opening address to the Jamaica Agri-Business Investment Forum (JAIF) on Thursday. The three-day conference which started on Wednesday was held at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St James.

Lowe in his address acknowledged the ongoing challenges that businesses face in securing capital.

“It’s no secret that interest rates are high and the eligibility criteria are even higher. And the challenge that many of us face is the ability to scale,” he noted.

“We are looking at a couple of pilot programmes over the next 12 months that will bring technology into play in a way that can help determine credit worthiness, allow pilot programmes like mobile wallets to be possible where we can help to extend credit in more innovative ways,” added Lowe.

He said the aim is not to bypass the commercial banking spaces, “but to complement them”.

“In the places where they don’t wish to be, we want to be there and will be there,” assured Lowe.

Following his presentation, Lowe told the Jamaica Observer that the DBJ was seizing on the forum as an opportunity to inform stakeholders of innovations being made.

“We want to look at ways in which we can provide capital in ways such as using digital wallets, creating platforms for technology to allow us to have creditworthiness checked, where things like the agro parks being rented to farmers, we can use that as part of their creditworthiness, because if they’re paying monthly leases consistently, you have somebody leasing land,” he explained.

Lowe noted that this will provide an opportunity to get a clear picture of what is happening on the ground.

“Are they paying on time? Are they paying in full on time? Are they paying in part but on time? These things affect creditworthiness. But, before this, we haven’t had a system that is able to capture all elements of what is going to constitute access to capital, because creditworthiness is important, and eligibility is also important. So, we are trying to unlock these things,” he said.

“The bank sees itself as a smart bank of the future. It also sees itself as an IT-enabled bank, which means that IT must be first demonstrated in our own conduct and analysis, and then we use that leverage to help people in business, whether it’s in agriculture or manufacturing,” added Lowe.

“The other thing that we’re going to do is to continue to work with public-private partnerships. We have relationships with the EU, the World Bank, and IDB, to name a few. We’re going to continue to find pilot programmes, just like the one that we’ve done successfully, where we have these capacity-building programmes,” stated the DBJ managing director.

Another format is the blended financing approach which allows the bank to find ways to bring down the average cost of capital. Lowe said this is what DBJ is trying to do with its newest product, the Orbit programme launched last week

“It is the newest lending product that we have, and it’s the fastest take-up we’ve seen within a week. We have commitments for almost half of that by the commercial banks,” stated Lowe in reference to the funds that are being distributed by those financial institutions.