Akanksha Barot · How I can help · Lenders and insurers
Lenders and insurers
Onboarding and claims flows that survive a shared phone, not just a compliance review.
Agricultural lending and insurance already have the right incentive: the business only works if farmers repay and claims are legitimate. What usually breaks is everything between the pitch and the first renewal. KYC, claims filing and underwriting get built for a compliance review, not for someone completing them on a shared phone with patchy signal.
Who this is for
- Agricultural lenders, microfinance institutions, and crop or asset insurers serving farming communities.
- A digital credit or insurance product losing farmers at KYC, claims filing, or underwriting.
- A risk model built on platform usage data that may not reflect who you are actually trying to reach.
What usually goes wrong
- 01
Farmers drop off at exactly the moments that matter most
Digital credit and insurance products routinely lose farmers at exactly the moments that matter most — KYC completion, claims filing, underwriting steps — because those flows were built for compliance, not for someone completing them on a shared phone with patchy signal.
- 02
Risk models inherit the bias of who already trusted the platform
Risk models trained on platform usage data quietly encode the bias of who already trusted the platform enough to use it, which isn’t the same population as the addressable market.
- 03
The agent network is underfunded relative to the tech stack around it
The agent network that actually builds farmer trust in a financial product is usually the most underfunded part of the operation, relative to what gets spent on the tech stack around it.
What backs it
Credit that reaches a smallholder without an address, a credit file, or a spare afternoon, as one of four core services on the direct-to-farmer platform.
Jiva AgServices, Indonesia, Product Lead, 2021 to 2025Sequencing the day for Jiva field agents produced roughly a 30 percent productivity gain. The same agent network is what actually builds farmer trust in a financial product.
Jiva AgServices, IndonesiaEighteen people across Product, Design, Engineering, Data, Research and Field Ops, reporting to the Chief Product Officer.
Jiva AgServices (Olam Global Holdings)Relevant here
- Micro-financing
Credit that reaches a smallholder without an address, a credit file, or a spare afternoon.
Source: Jiva, one of four core services on the direct-to-farmer platform. - Field agent management
Visit planning, sequencing, coordination and what each agent is accountable for by the end of the day.
Source: Jiva field coordination product, Indonesia. Roughly 30 percent field staff productivity gain. - Leadership reporting
The internal view leadership actually steers on, rather than the deck assembled the night before the board call.
Source: Internal operations tooling at AgriCentral and Jiva.
What working together looks like
Three tools, applied in sequence rather than picked one at a time. This is what using them looks like:
- 01
Map the onboarding and claims flow as farmers actually experience it
Where the drop-off happens, and whether it is a compliance step or a design one, using the Trust Ladder as the frame.
- 02
Decide where the agent network earns its budget back
The Last-Mile Multiplier turns agent investment into a number a finance team can defend, rather than a line item that competes with the tech stack.
- 03
Pressure-test the risk model before it ships
The AI-Native Readiness Check applies directly to any alternative-data underwriting model, before it goes into production rather than after.
What this record is, and what it is not
Micro-financing was one of four core services on the platform I built at Jiva, alongside advisory, commerce and field coordination. It is not a portfolio of lending or insurance clients. The Trust Ladder, the Last-Mile Multiplier and the AI-Native Readiness Check are built from that experience and from watching where digital credit and insurance products lose smallholder farmers, not a claim of having shipped a lending or insurance product end to end.
Published elsewhere
- PodcastLearnings from 10M downloads with AgriCentral PM Akanksha BarotThe Crop Chronicles, by Jiva. Episode 5, 31 minutes
How AgriCentral reached ten million downloads, why the first year of adoption was slow, and what transferred to Indonesia.
- InterviewLessons from 10 million downloadsJiva, on Medium
The written version. Acquisition, the seven languages, and the interface decisions that came out of watching farmers hold a phone.