ICICI Bank to use satellite data to assess credit worthiness of farmers

Private sector lender ICICI Lender will use satellite data—imagery from Earth observation satellites—to evaluate credit rating worthiness of its consumers belonging to the farm sector.

“This use of ground breaking technologies will help farmers with existing credit rating to enrich their eligibility, even though new-to-credit rating farmers can now get improved accessibility to credit rating,” it explained in a statement on Tuesday.

Additional, because the land verification is completed in a contactless fashion with the assistance of satellite info, credit rating assessments are remaining completed inside of a handful of days as against the field exercise of up to 15 days, the lender explained.

It has previously conducted a pilot study utilizing satellite info for the earlier handful of months in over five hundred villages in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and designs to scale up the initiative to over sixty three,000 villages throughout the state before long.

“This, put together with demographic and economic information, offers powerful data on the land asset of the farmers. We believe that that utilization of this technologies will enrich accessibility to credit rating as new-to-credit rating farmers will have quick accessibility to formal credit rating, as properly as farmers with existing credit rating strains will be in a position to securely extend their eligibility,” explained Anup Bagchi, Govt Director, ICICI Lender.

The lender has partnered with agri–fintech companies specialising in harnessing room technologies and weather data for professional utilization and has worked with them to make experiences with over 40 parameters.

The lender employs satellite info to evaluate rainfall and temperature info of earlier years, soil dampness concentrations in earlier years, surface area drinking water availability, traits in crop sowing including crop title, tentative sowing and harvesting months, crop health and yields, agriculture land spot information including latitude, longitude and boundary of the land as properly as nearby areas of warehouses and mandis.