ICICI Bank To Use Satellite Data To Assess Credit Worthiness For Farm Loans

On Tuesday, ICICI Bank announced the usage of satellite data to access creditworthiness of its customers in the farming sector.

"This use of innovative technology helps farmers with existing credit to enhance their eligibility, while new-to-credit farmers can now get better access to credit," it said in a statement.

The private lender said that since the land verification will be done in a contactless manner with the help of satellite data, credit assessments can be completed in a few days instead of the industry practice of 15 days.

It has already conducted a pilot study using satellite data for the past few months in over 500 villages in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and plans to scale up the initiative to over 63,000 villages across the country soon.

"This, combined with demographic and financial details, provides strong information on the land asset of the farmers. We believe that usage of this technology will enhance accessibility to credit as new-to-credit farmers will have easy access to formal credit, as well as farmers with existing credit lines will be able to securely expand their eligibility," said Anup Bagchi, Executive Director of ICICI Bank.