Using Satellite Data to Assess the Credit Worthiness of Farmers
ICICI Bank’s continuous efforts to provide state-of-the-art and futuristic digital solutions to its rural customers led it to use satellite data to to assess the creditworthiness of farmers in a contactless manner. This helped both customers and employees, especially during the pandemic, to get access to reliable information without having to visit the land.
We are the first bank in the country and among few globally to harness the technique. We use satellite data to assess several parameters related to land, irrigation and crop patterns.Further, we use it in combination with demographic and financial parameters to make quick lending decisions for farmers within a few days, a marked improvement over the industry practice of taking upto 15 days.
So far, we have used satellite imagery in 500 villages spread across Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. We plan to extend the initiative to over 63,000 more villages.
Data harnessed by satellites is relevant as it
provides information pertaining to
- Rainfall and temperature over the past few years
- Soil moisture levels over time
- Availability of surface water
- Trends in crop sowing (crop grown, the time taken to sow
and harvest it along with the quality and yield) - Precise location of the land
- Area the land encompasses
- Location of the nearest warehouses and mandis(or farmers' markets)
We use the information from satellites further in new internal scoring models which help us populate indices for district level, village level as well as for individual land. This provides key inputs to credit assessment such as an estimate of the past and projected agriculture income, the timing of harvest and sources of income among others.
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