Over 20 million adults remain financially underserved—not because they lack creditworthiness, but because traditional assessments are inadequate for financial inclusion. These might be gig workers with fluctuating incomes, young professionals with thin credit files, or renters who pay on time but never take out credit.
Financial inclusion remains a challenge because these customers simply don’t fit into outdated risk models.
Why? Because traditional affordability checks rely on static data—borrowing history, annual income snapshots, and rigid credit scoring. But not everyone’s financial lives are so static. Spending patterns, cash flow trends, and transaction behaviours offer a clearer view of financial health. Without these insights, lenders and other credit providers might exclude viable customers and miss untapped market opportunities.
In this post, we’ll show you how spending behaviours reveal overlooked customer segments, why data is key to financial inclusion in lending, and how financial institutions like yours can unlock new opportunities through better insights.
The hidden customers: How spending behaviours highlight underserved customer segments
Spending behaviours and cash flow patterns offer a clearer picture of financial health than traditional credit scoring alone. Without these insights, lenders risk excluding creditworthy individuals and missing out on valuable customer segments.
Let’s look at some examples:
Example 1: Gig workers with fluctuating incomes
The modern workforce is changing. Freelancers, ride-share drivers, and contractors’ income varies month to month, which traditional models might misinterpret as financial instability.
But when you look closer at the transaction data, you might find:
✅ Consistent earnings across multiple income sources
✅ Regular bill payments, rent contributions, and savings deposits
✅ Strong financial management, despite variable pay values and dates
Without these insights, banks often classify gig workers as high-risk, denying them access to loans, mortgages, or even basic credit-building opportunities—despite their demonstrated financial responsibility.
Example 2: Young professionals with thin credit files
Recent graduates and young professionals often struggle to access financial products because they simply haven’t had time to build credit history. Traditional models don’t account for the everyday financial habits that actually show reliability, such as:
✅ On-time rent and utility payments
✅ Regular savings and discretionary spending management
✅ Subscription payments that indicate financial responsibility
Despite having stable employment, this group is routinely overlooked. A closer look at their spending behaviour often reveals patterns of someone who would make an excellent long-term customer, not a credit risk.
By analysing real-time spending and income data, lenders can:
- Identify financially stable customers who don’t fit traditional models
- Differentiate between genuine affordability risks and underserved segments
- Improve financial inclusion by offering fairer access to credit and services
Traditional financial assessment methods leave significant gaps. It’s time for a change. Spending insights and cashflow data can bridge these gaps, ensuring viable customers aren’t left behind—while helping lenders grow their customer base with qualified borrowers they might otherwise miss.
Breaking the mould: Designing financial inclusion in lending
To improve financial inclusion, lenders need better ways to assess affordability. A cashflow-based approach provides a real-time view of financial health, allowing banks to design fairer, more accessible financial products.
Why traditional financial assessment models struggle with financial inclusion for lending
❌Fixed income assumptions – Many financial products are built around steady, predictable salaries, making them unsuitable for gig workers, self-employed individuals, and commission-based earners.
❌Lack of affordability precision – Credit scores and annual income figures tell you what happened in the past, not what’s happening now. They miss crucial indicators like spending behaviours, essential expenses, and how people weather financial storms.
❌One-size-fits-all repayment structures – Most repayment structures assume everyone manages money the same way. But that may not reflect how different individuals manage their day-to-day finances.
With cash flow analysis and real-time transaction insights, you can break away from these outdated models and create financial solutions that actually fit people’s lives.
How better data leads to more inclusive products
✅ Flexible credit that works with variable incomes
Most credit products assume fixed monthly payslips, but that’s not the reality for millions of responsible potential customers. A cashflow-based approach allows for:
- More accurate income assessments, tracking multiple income sources over time, not just a single source monthly figure.
- Flexible repayment options, aligning payment dates with your customers’ actual income patterns
- Reduce unnecessary declines, by recognising stable financial behaviours even when incomes fluctuate
✅ Smart savings & budgeting tools
People with irregular cashflows often struggle to save, not because of poor discipline, but because standard savings models assume consistent cash flow. With granular transaction insights, you can offer something better:
- Identify safe saving opportunities without disrupting financial stability.
- Automate adaptive savings contributions, adjusting amounts based on income fluctuations.
- Offer personalised financial guidance, nudging customers toward better money management.
✅ Fairer affordability assessments
Static data fails to capture the full story of a person’s financial responsibility. With a cashflow-based approach, you can:
- Spot genuine financial stability through recurring expenses and responsible spending.
- Offer custom lending options based on real affordability, not outdated credit histories.
- Improve loan accessibility and financial inclusion in lending without increasing risk
Financial products should reflect how people actually manage money, not solely on their credit history. With cashflow insights and transaction data, you can design solutions that work for more people—expanding access to financial services while maintaining responsible lending standards.
Why financial inclusion in lending benefits both customers and businesses
When a lender improves its ability to assess real financial health, everyone benefits. Customers get products that truly fit their lives, while lenders discover qualified borrowers they would have otherwise missed.
Here’s how this plays out:
| For your customers | For your business |
| Access to fairer financial productsTraditional models exclude many people who can afford credit but simply don’t fit rigid approval criteria. More inclusive banking gives these customers fairer access to loans, mortgages, and credit products they can actually manage. | Expanding your customer baseUsing cashflow analysis and transaction data, you can identify creditworthy individuals who go unnoticed by traditional financial assessments. This opens up entirely new customer segments your competitors might be missing. |
| Better financial stabilityWhen you offer smarter affordability checks and adaptive financial tools, you help customers borrow, save, and manage money more effectively. This reduces financial stress, improves money confidence and helps them build stronger financial foundations. | Stronger customer relationshipsPeople naturally value lenders that understand their actual financial reality, not just their credit history. When you offer personalised financial products that fit real lives, you build the kind of trust and loyalty that keeps customers with you for decades. |
| Improved financial literacyPersonalised insights drawn from spending behaviours and transaction data help your customers understand their financial health and make better decisions. You become a partner in their financial journey, not just a service provider. | Reduced default riskMore accurate affordability assessments lead to better lending decisions. By analysing real-time financial behaviours, you can confidently distinguish between financially stable individuals with non-traditional income patterns and those who truly present a risk. |
| Greater financial resilienceWhen people have access to the right financial products at the right time, they can build credit, grow savings, and create long-term financial security. You help them weather financial storms and build toward their goals. | Regulatory and reputational advantagesRegulators increasingly expect financial institutions to prioritise inclusion. By proactively improving financial access, you enhance your reputation with both customers and regulators—potentially reducing compliance pressures. |
When banks expand access to fair financial products, they create a positive cycle. Customers gain financial stability and literacy, making them better banking customers. Meanwhile, banks grow their market, reduce risk, and build stronger relationships—all while ensuring more people have access to the financial tools they need.
So, how can you unlock these overlooked opportunities? That’s what we’ll go through next.
Seeing the full picture: How granular data improves financial inclusion
People with thin credit files, multiple income sources, or non-traditional employment often fall through the cracks. It’s not because they can’t afford financial products, but because the system isn’t designed to recognise them.
Granular insights change all this. Here’s how:
#1. Spot hidden creditworthy customers
The challenge: How do you identify financially stable, responsible customers when traditional credit files don’t tell their story?
The solution: Cashflow insights reveal what traditional credit scores can’t. By analysing transaction patterns, you can spot consistent income (even from multiple sources), regular bill payments, and responsible spending habits—all indicators of creditworthiness that traditional methods miss.
#2. Make smarter affordability decisions
The challenge: Annual income figures and credit scores provide a limited view of financial health.
The solution: Transaction-level data gives you a real-time view of spending, financial commitments, and disposable income patterns. This helps you understand what customers can truly afford today, not just what their financial situation looked like months ago.
#3. Provide support before problems arise
The challenge: Traditional models typically only identify financial difficulty after it’s become serious.
The solution: With detailed transaction data, you can spot early warning signs of financial distress—such as increasing reliance on overdrafts or sudden changes in spending patterns. This allows you to offer proactive support, potentially preventing defaults while strengthening customer relationships.
#4. Create products that reflect real lives
The challenge: Often financial products don’t match how people actually earn and spend money.
The solution: Insights into spending habits and income fluctuations help you design products that align with real-world financial behaviours. Think flexible repayment options that match income patterns or adaptive savings tools that adjust to changing circumstances.
#5. Turn declines into approvals
The challenge: Banks often reject potentially valuable customers because they lack traditional qualifying information.
The solution: Instead of declining applications based on incomplete data, you can identify viable applicants who demonstrate financial responsibility through their spending behaviours. These “hidden gems” often become loyal, profitable customers when given the chance.
Better insights, better outcomes.
Financial inclusion: Where opportunity meets responsibility
For too long, financial inclusion has been limited by outdated financial assessment methods and a reliance on static data. Many potential customers are turned away, not because they can’t afford financial products, but because the system isn’t built to recognise their financial behaviours.
What if there was a better way? Granular transaction insights and cash flow analysis offer exactly that. By looking beyond credit scores and static income checks, banks can uncover hidden opportunities, reduce unnecessary declines, and design fairer, more accessible financial products.
Banks and other lenders that use real-time financial insights will expand their market, strengthen customer loyalty, and reduce risk—all while meeting increasing regulatory expectations around affordability and responsible lending.
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