Meet the winners of the Xente Credit Scoring Challenge

According to the Uganda FinScope 2018 survey findings, 46% (8.5 million) adults borrowed money during the 12-month period prior to the survey, with the majority borrowing to cover regular living expenses (such as education) during low-income periods. Further, the largest source of borrowing is from informal lenders i.e. savings groups, burial societies, community-based money lenders etc.

Xente is a Ugandan e-commerce startup that makes it easy for consumers to make payments, get loans, and shop using simply a mobile phone. Using the Xente app you can access personal loans of from UGX 500 – UGX 3,000,000.* The funds can be deposited into your Xente wallet, and then transferred into your Xente Visa card, mobile money wallet, or bank account. You can make transactions using the app using your mobile money or bank card.Alternatively, you can use the funds to buy any product or service in the Xente app. Xente also has a “Buy Now & Pay Later” option, for products such as airtime and data, bill payments, utilities, movies, and bus tickets.**

The objective of this challenge is to create a machine learning model to predict which individuals are most likely to default on their loans, based on their loan repayment behaviour and ecommerce transaction activity.

The resulting models and solutions will help Xente refine their credit decision processes, and enable them to more adequately assess the creditworthiness of new and existing clients. For Xente, this may result in improved profitability and financial sustainability; while for Xente’s cliente, increased creditworthiness would enhance their access to credit and contribute to an improved livelihood.

This challenge is hosted by Xente, in association with Standard Bank

About Xente (xente.co)

Xente is an e-payments, e-commerce, and financial services company in Uganda offering various products and services that can be paid for using Mobile Money (Airtel Money, MTN Mobile Money), Bank Card (Visa Card, Master Card,Amex), Xente wallet and on credit (Pay Later). Some of the products consumers can buy include airtime, data bundles, pay water and electricity bills, TV subscription services, buy event tickets, movie tickets, bus tickets, and more.

About the Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge

The Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge (SBTIC) is a competition for teams of students in South African tertiary institutions, at undergraduate and honours level, to demonstrate their programming ability and teamwork capabilities with limited resources.

Each of the participating tertiary institutions enters a number of teams. The teams attempt to solve as many problems as possible during the Heats, which take place at the tertiary institutions during the first half of the year. The top teams from the the top 15 institutions are then invited to the Finals in Johannesburg. The winning student teams and tertiary institutions receive prizes as outlined in the SBTIC rules and terms and conditions.

In 2019, the theme of the SBTIC is Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and the winners will be awarded and recognised for show-casing their engineering excellence, creativity and innovation.

For more information, please visit the Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge website.

You may use only the datasets provided for this competition to build your model.

If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the final ranking, you NOT will be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification and you will NOT be required to assign rights of copyright to Zindi. We will however encourage the winners to share their code with Zindi and the competition hosts as well as on GitHub as a public good to the sector.

Individual competitors are now able to form teams on this competition. You must accept the rules associated with teaming.

Multiple accounts per user are not allowed. Collaboration across individuals not in the same team is not allowed. And collaboration across different teams that is not allowed.

Code must not be shared privately. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform.

The solution must use publically-available, open-source packages only.

Maximum 10 solutions submitted per day. Your highest-scoring solution will be the one by which you are judged.

Note that there is NO Public and Private Leaderboards. If two solutions earn identical scores on the leaderboard, the tie breaker will be the date and time in which the submission was made (the earlier solution will win).

Refer to the FAQs and Terms of Use for additional rules that may apply to this competition.

You acknowledge and agree that Zindi may, without any obligation to do so, remove or disqualify an individual, team, or account if Zindi believes that such individual, team, or account is in violation of these Rules.

We reserve the right to modify these rules at any time as necessary.

As this competition is now closed we have increased the number of daily submissions to 30.

1. Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge

This challenge is an invitational challenge designed in association with Standard Bank, specifically for the Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge (SBTIC) Finals.If you are at the SBTIC Finals taking place from 30 August to 3 September 2019 in Johannesburg, South Africa, you may enter this challenge by giving your email address to the Zindi representative.

2. Knowledge Competition

After the SBTIC, this competition will be re-opened as a Points Challenge open to anyone in the Zindi community.

The evaluation metric for this challenge is the Area Under the Curve (AUC).

Your submission file should look like:

TransactionId	        IsDefaulted
TransactionId_925	0
TransactionId_1080	1
TransactionId_2315	0
TransactionId_1466	0
TransactionId_337	1

There are no cash prizes for this challenge.

However, the top 10 submissions will earn up to 2000 Zindi Points.

1. Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge

During the Standard Bank Tech Impact Challenge (SBTIC) this Challenge's submissions will be accepted on the Challenge Platform during the period which begins at 8:00am SAST August 30, 2019 and ends at 13:00pm SAST August 30, 2019 (“Submission Period”).

2. Points Competition

After the SBTIC, this competition will be re-opened as a Points Challenge.

Competition closes on 1 December 2019.

Final submissions must be received by 11:59 PM GMT.

We reserve the right to update the contest timeline if necessary.