Belvo launches employment data solution in Colombia

Latin American Open Finance data and payments platform Belvo has launched an employment data aggregation solution in Colombia, with the aim to help close the country’s credit access gap.

The new solution has been launched from the Planilla Integrada de Liquidación de Aportes (PILA), which is a virtual platform provided by the Colombian government where users pay and report their contribution to the social security system.

Belvo’s latest Open Finance offering allows users to share their formal employment income data, giving credit providers an additional way to verify users’ income, status, and job stability.

Typically, credit bureaus and internal risk models only have data on a limited portion of the population, which is often inaccurate or outdated, according to Belvo.

With 30 million registered workers in Colombia, 14 million of which are informal workers and 16 million are formal workers, Belvo said the new data source offers “vast potential”.

“According to Banca de las Oportunidades, as of 2023, more than 24 million adults in Colombia did not have access to a credit product in the formal financial system,” said David Ballesteros, general manager of Belvo in Colombia.

“Thanks to the connection with the PILA system enabled by Belvo, we can help close this significant gap in Colombia, as social security data provides an alternative way to verify the payment capacity of the unbanked population or those without a traditional credit history.”

The new data source, which is already offered by Belvo in Mexico, complements its ‘Income Verification’ product, which uses bank data to provide a more accurate picture of consumers’ financial health.

Last year, Belvo introduced a solution in Colombia to help merchants and fintechs accept Pagos Seguros en Línea (PSE), a bank-to-bank payment method, with the aim to increase the rate of adoption of the digital payment method in the country.