United Overseas Bank Ltd (UOB) said it has made credit underwriting for small businesses in the region more efficient with the use of a credit underwriting engine powered by data analytics.

The innovation more than halves the turnaround time and the number of steps involved in a small business loan application, the bank said.

The analytics-enabled engine, first rolled out two years ago, has since been implemented in Thailand and four other markets: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

The enhanced system harnesses the bank’s existing sources of information with new pools of data, such as those relating to the company’s day-to-day operations. It then applies analytics to gain deeper insights into the credit behaviour of small businesses.

Lawrence Loh, head of group business banking at UOB, said many small businesses may not keep a proper record of their accounts or have audited financial statements. “By redesigning the credit underwriting engine, we can now process loan requests from small businesses with greater speed and accuracy,” Loh said.