Host: That is starting to change with one company now building all three under one roof for the same underserved customer. Joining me is Laurent Dier, who is the CEO, the COO of Ezra and chairman of Ezra Virtual Asset. Laurent, welcome to Capital Markets. Street to Mina, now let's start from the beginning. You said across credit, across, um, ESEM and telecom and digital assets all at once. Uh, here, what's the actual connection, um, connected thread, let's say, between all of these sectors?
Laurent Dier: Yeah, thank you. Um, I think the connecting thread is effectively what I would call innovation with purpose, right? So we are looking at pockets of inefficiencies. Aspects that are difficult for people to reach, underserved people, underbanked people, and more and more nomad or digital nomad sort of people as well, right, so those that are constantly on the booth, the underdeserved, the underserved, underserved, and so. It doesn't mean they're not active. Some of them are actually extremely active, but it makes it difficult to document your credit score, to have easily access to even a small corporate bank account and that sort of thing. So that's really the niche where we play. It's part of a group that's called Transfer 2 where we effectively look at those people and provide them different ways of sorting their needs from. Telecommunication network access but also credit access and mostly digital value movement including money movement in one of our sister companies.
Host: DT1 rebranded Dent as tools to build a global platform. Why did a payment and a credit company want to own telecom infrastructure?
Laurent Dier: So we started from a telco background in the world of prepaid, if you like, right? So it was always a little bit at the border between telco and finance. And we follow our clients' needs and because we work in a B2B2C model we even follow their clients' needs and so these needs are evolving. The world is globalizing, people moving around a lot more and therefore adding an EI infrastructure into an existing. Marketplace for digital goods that was a natural evolution serving what our clients need and also builds credit products like loans, overdrafts, as well, specifically for underserved markets like we were saying now.
Host: So what's different about underwriting credit in Those markets versus a developed one?
Laurent Dier: It is entirely different ball game, right? You need to, you need to rethink everything. The data that is accessible is very different. The economics are very different. I mean we issue literally millions of loans that are that have a single value of. 3 to $20 so you can't do a credit check that costs you $2 right? So you need to reinvent your scoring, adapt a lot more data points and that's where our telco background also comes into play because we start by analyzing the telco behavior to form views on the credit side, on the financial credit side. So usually we go in, uh, finance telco, what what's called ACS, uh, airtime credit, and then from there form a view of the understanding of the client, their behavior, their propensity to repay, and then we. More from airtime credit into a nano loan and credit line later on, yeah, and you can know what they need exactly.
Host: So where do digital assets actually fit into into this? Is it a payment trail, store of value for your customer base, or maybe something else entirely different?
Laurent Dier: A little bit of all of the above, right? So it is obviously a new way of moving digital value quicker. So that is very important for us to be part of that. Our sister company now moves money through these rails in terms of credit. What we like is to put next to credit a micro savings sort of proposition, and many countries, especially in Africa, sometimes in Asia, have their currency moving quite a bit and therefore offering a more stable savings environment. Very interesting. And so we try to promote sort of responsible savings that also inform credit decisions if they have short term capital needs.
Host: Speaking of other, you also had experience working with the Rajhi Bank and Saudi for years. You spent years as well with them. How does that experience shape your work now and what you do at the moment?
Laurent Dier: Look, uh, uh, the, the, the, the way I like to present that is that, you know, the same football match you can, uh, you can be a player on the field, but if you are, uh, you know, playing in the front or as a, as a goalkeeper, you don't see the same match and if you are the ref, you certainly not see the same match either.
Host: I love the analogy.
Laurent Dier: And, and you know, as a spectator it's yet another so I've been looking at effective. The same market from different lenses you think payment is payment everywhere. You think credit is credit everywhere, while credit for underserved is very different than traditional credit and credit for underserved in Botswana is very different than credit for underserved in Kenya. So effectively it just teaches you to rethink the reality that you think are there. And adapt to the reality, change your scoring, change your risk appetite, and so it is extremely interesting, of course, when it comes to the environment and the regulations, of course it's way different. Maybe it's evolving at the moment. It has a lot of very strong benefits compared to other countries because people are documented. Their identity is well known. It's easy to score them. It's easy to find them. Uh, so, so that's good, of course. Uh, what's a little bit more difficult is the fragmentation of the regulation, uh, where literally every market, uh, operates slightly differently, um, so, so it has pros and cons, but by and large I think, uh, the region overall made absolutely great progress in, uh, understanding how to lay the foundation for a safe, um, let's say, um. You know, playing ground for innovative solutions while balancing that with the normal security that you and trust that you want to build in a financial ecosystem. So I think it's a good combination.
Host: So what does the next billion users actually mean in practice? Who's that customer and what are they actually currently locked out of?
Laurent Dier: Yeah, so I think there are multiple ways of using the same terms, right? I mean it tends to to. Uh, refer to the underserved and, and the unbanked. Uh, what you see now is that you have a lot of people that might be mobilely included before they are actually financially included, uh, but you also have the new generations coming in and you see that their behaviors are completely different than the current generation. Um, they might not see the bank as the most trusted partners anymore. They might prefer their, their telco provider or, or vice versa. They might not like their telco anymore but now trust the bank or. Trust an electronic brand that gives them more trust than the traditional institutions. So I think that's also the next billion. It's effectively these upcoming generations that change the way they operate and they interact with financial and telco services.
Host: What do they still need now when we look at the underserved customer? What is still missing?
Laurent Dier: Look, it's a deep understanding of their needs. We, we, we have tens of millions of customers in Latin America or in Africa that just like you and me want to see Netflix, but you know what, if they have to borrow 3 or $5 for their phone, they certainly can't pay $20 for their monthly subscription. So, so how about you now can pay Netflix for a day or for a week. So these sort of models that is effectively. You know, adapting to the reality of, of, uh, of these people, so, um, makes it an interesting world.
Host: Yeah, definitely, and it's an amazing work that you're doing at the moment. So thank you so much for being with us today.
Laurent Dier: Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate it.
