LENDMI: A Social Lending Platform for Migrant Workers
1Economics and Finance, RMIT University, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
2Digital Business, RMIT University, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
3Management, RMIT University, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
4International Business, RMIT University, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
A Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for IBCOL 2023
Sustainable Development Goals
Keywords
Abstract
Recent study shows that growing and aging economies in Southeast Asia (SEA) increases demand for migrant labors. While migrants are motivated by a strong desire to improve life of themselves and families through foreign works, they are vulnerable during migration process due to high upfront costs and thus inevitably seeking for borrowing money to finance their journey. However, traditional bank loans are not generally available for migrant labors due to (1) lack of credit scoring methods, and (2) the fear of default risks.
During participation of IBCOL competition, we have identified great potential funding sources from destination countries with aging population since they have an emerging demand for high risk portfolios in exchange for higher expected return later on, leading to prominent motivation for cross-border investments. Thus, LENDMI, a P2P lending solution using smart contracts and consortium blockchains for migrant workers is born with purposes to 1) streamline the lending process of migrant labors and 2) support workers in migrating through regular channels by providing affordable funding sources from destination countries.