Matthew Flannery, CEO and Founder, Branch International

As CEO and co-founder, Matt is responsible for driving strategy, building the global team across three continents, raising capital and ensuring word about the service reaches the right audience. Branch currently operates in four countries with offices in San Francisco, Lagos, Nairobi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Branch has issued over $500 million in loans to over 4 million borrowers since its inception in 2015. Matt graduated from Stanford with degrees in Symbolic Systems and Philosophy.
In an interaction with Shweta Papriwal, Editor-in-Chief, indiainfoline.com, Matthew Flannery, CEO and Founder of Branch International, said: “Our mission is to provide world-class financial services in emerging markets.”
What is the Branch app? Branch International’s growth story?
Branch is a machine learning-enabled mobile financial service for emerging markets with the goal of unlocking financial access for billions of underserved people around the world. The customer-centric service offers fast, fair and flexible loans with no late fees, rollover fees or restrictions on how the money is spent.
Branch was founded in 2015 by Daniel Jung and Matthew Flannery. With operations in India, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, Branch has disbursed over $500 million to 4 million borrowers globally over the past 5 years. The app has been downloaded over 20 million times and has an average rating of 4.3.
We entered the Indian market in 2019 and so far we have disbursed over INR 1.21 billion in loans to users in all 29 states. In India, Branch is the only solution for users to access their free credit score and report.
What are BranchApp’s future plans?
Currently branching into nano-loans and a free credit score for its users. We will expand our offerings in India to include wallets, bill payments, payday loans and savings products.
What is Branch International’s mission and vision?
Our mission is to provide world-class financial services in emerging markets.
We aspire to be a full-service digital bank in every market. By launching new products in addition to loans, we will forge lasting relationships with our customers, who constitute the budding middle class.
How is Branch App different from other players?
Unlike traditional institutions, Branch gives people the ability to build credit despite having a limited credit history by assessing creditworthiness based on data captured from customers’ smartphones. Branch’s algorithms process thousands of data points to create a personalized loan
choice in seconds.
How is the brand bringing an evolution to the Indian market?
Branch comes with the unique proposition of providing loans to users that are not otherwise accepted by traditional banks. In emerging markets, especially among the growing young population, this is becoming a perpetual problem. Take for example a credit card industry that only has about 3% penetration in a large country like India. Credit card acceptance rates are based on a person’s credit history and a person cannot establish a healthy and adequate credit history early in life. The branch helps provide financial assistance to this growing base of Indian users who otherwise could not access traditional financial services. On top of that, the fast pace of getting a quick loan seamlessly and the benefits and flexibility of repayments allow users to make smoother and better decisions.