Publish Date : 02.09.20

Banks will use satellite data to a power credit assessment of farmers

ATM News Network: ICICI Bank today announced the usage of satellite data—imagery from Earth Observation satellites—to assess the creditworthiness of its customers belonging to the farm sector. The ICICI Bank is the first in India and among a few globally to use satellite data to measure an array of parameters related to the land, irrigation and crop patterns and use it in combination with demographic and financial parameters to make expeditious lending decisions for farmers.

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. Additionally, since the land verification is done in a contactless manner with the help of satellite data, credit assessments are being done within a few days as against the industry practice of up to 15 days. The Bank has been 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 shortly across the country.

This use of satellite data provides a quick and technically sound analysis of the land, crop, and irrigation patterns from remote locations, without the need of the customer or a bank official having to visit the land. It offers farmers the significant advantage of reliable data being provided to the Bank without any hassles of travel, operational or logistical expenditure to them.

Some of the key satellite data being used by the Bank are Rainfall, temperature, Soil moisture levels of past years, Surface water availability, trends in crop sowing including crop name, tentative sowing & harvesting weeks, crop health, and yields, agriculture land location details including latitude, longitude, and boundary of the land. This innovative technology will help farmers, who are existing customers of the Bank as well as non-customers, to avail KCC (Kisan Credit Card) loans.