Delving the complex world of financial services, a team of five — a designer, an economist, 2 engineers, and an entrepreneur — explored this very human and personal market space through the people that live it. They made insightful discoveries around motivations and behavior patterns and identified a number of interesting opportunity areas. Through the ideating and testing of numerous ideas and concepts they ultimately found great potential for financial services delivered through human social networks.
From conversations to ideas to MVP
During the research phase our Seed team met with dozens of people who each interacted with the financial services sector in different ways. An interesting insight was the large portion of people who chose not to engage with formal financial institutions. It seemed less of a problem of access for most people, and more of a lack of trust for banks.
The team surfaced a range of insights from their interviews, and opportunities for innovation began to crystallize. It became apparent that if you could put a human face to a financial relationship you might be able to overcome distrust and create tailored services to match people’s real needs and goals.
After several rounds of prototyping, the Seed team established a business concept anchored around a recurring personality within middle-class communities in Colombia: the community advisor. These advisors are trusted members of neighborhoods that people go to for advice, loans and help. Their prevalence inspired the team to propose a structured partnership model.
Engaging informal advisors, or Consejeros, as a channel to deliver easy to understand and tangible financial products, Aflore distributes loans and advice for people to realize their financial goals. People are more likely to re-pay when their loan is attached to their social circle, and Aflore creates career paths for Consejeros to grow while helping their community.
Team
"I joined Aflore to be part of a passionate group of creative thinkers, breaking boundaries in Fintech"
