The other thing that we noticed was consumer behaviour changed, which was really interesting. Some of it was taking the subsidies and doing this, some it was taking the payment holiday and doing this, and some of it was just people doing it on their own: but we've seen the largest stockpile of cash going into bank accounts that we've ever seen, of just new deposits that came in over COVID. And so there's this big pot of cash that consumers are holding onto right now.

And I think the provision for credit losses that most of the banks had forecasts through COVID were relatively high and nothing came to fruition, right. They didn't see the link. And in fact, delinquency rates have been dropping, even when deferrals ran off as the freezes expired. We thought, well, you know, the people taking deferrals are probably the people that need it. Once they don't have that option anymore. We're gonna see delinquency rates amongst that population increase... and it didn't. So it did, it's increased slightly, but not to the levels that we had thought. And so I think lenders looked at that brand. And they just said, No, we're ready, we're ready to jump back in and you know, ourselves from a supply perspective, we tighten the reins, you know, it was prudent from a risk perspective what we did, but we're ready to start to get back out and you know, reengage with consumers and lend.

I can answer your question as a consumer. And in general, I can also share my viewpoint on the whole market. No doubt Hong Kong is a very competitive market, the credit card issuers are facing strong competition. For myself, I think I have more than five cards but in general, I will focus on one or two cards that're my major transaction medium. Why I want to just focus on using one or two cards is because of the benefits, because of the discounts, because of the cashback. You can go to different shops or restaurants, you have discounts, you have rebates and then on different purchases, you have also other privileges. That's the major motivation. I think, in general that's true for other consumers in Hong Kong.

And on the other hand, as you're said because they're always new cards coming out with new features, especially the welcome gift, you spend a few $1,000 and then you can get some cash coupon or you can get some premium or whatever - then that will motivate you to to apply for new card, but after that it will just sit there. I think that's a very normal way of life.

Because I've seen a lot of fintechs out there, which had maybe a fantastic proposition, but it lacked a few elements to be really, really successful. We do see some smaller banks that have opened with a very clear digital strategy. They have been very successful to attract customers with a very strong marketing campaign, very visible in the media, and very visible in the streets, etc. What I do think in order for them to be successful, they need to make sure that the bank is not only marketing, colourful websites and apps, but they also need to make sure they integrate the risk policy, the credit risk policy.

I can answer your question as a consumer. And in general, I can also share my viewpoint on the whole market. No doubt Hong Kong is a very competitive market, the credit card issuers are facing strong competition. For myself, I think I have more than five cards but in general, I will focus on one or two cards that're my major transaction medium. Why I want to just focus on using one or two cards is because of the benefits, because of the discounts, because of the cashback. You can go to different shops or restaurants, you have discounts, you have rebates and then on different purchases, you have also other privileges. That's the major motivation. I think, in general that's true for other consumers in Hong Kong.

And on the other hand, as you're said because they're always new cards coming out with new features, especially the welcome gift, you spend a few $1,000 and then you can get some cash coupon or you can get some premium or whatever - then that will motivate you to to apply for new card, but after that it will just sit there. I think that's a very normal way of life.

Well, let me paint a picture of the banking landscape at that time, the banking landscape in the 90s in Ghana, West Africa, we were just beginning to wake up to the advantages that digitization could bring in terms of transforming from manual processes to technology-based processes. And more of automating the manual process, rather than looking at the processes end-to-end and transforming them. Very, very basic accounting, very basic bookkeeping, and all of that.

And nothing really digital as we know it today, because still if you wanted a banking service, you had to go to the bank physically, all that really had to change was that we're able to do a lot of transactions in a shorter period of time. And our books were more accurate.

But by the mid-1990s, I had started getting a little adventurous with what we could do with the technology stack that we had.

I think the unprecedented level of government support and the way that lenders and consumers alike have been able to help keep the ship afloat, mean that it definitely could have been a lot worse than what we've seen up to date. But to your point, there are still plenty of consumers, hurting out there, and hopefully are getting that assistance as they need it.

So we actually as home prices started coming back up, we saw that consumer started reprioritizing their mortgage ahead of credit card. And what we saw, you know, actually starting back in like the first quarter of 2017, we first see that mortgage overtakes auto as the primary payment. So the phenomenon of mortgage becoming the highest ranked actually started well before this pandemic. And then what we saw in the pandemic, was the separation between auto and mortgage delinquency got even bigger. It's likely due to a number of factors, as we talked about the accommodations, for sure, you know, suppressing that delinquency, but also, you had so many people now working from home that they had to protect their home, they might be willing to maybe let one of their autos go, because they weren't going anywhere, you know, and people weren't taking road trips, and they weren't worried about their car, they had to make sure that they had a place to work that coupled with the home price index in the US.

So that was my focus point is, if you've got nothing, that's where we start… for existing clients, you can just go with the Chief Operating Officer to a branch, have your scoring, talk to the loan officers about the clients, they know them, right, you'd be surprised by how many they have but they know them by name, and test the scoring.

It's not the only that the banks won't give the card to them, because they are too young, they don't have enough income, or things like that, they just don't want to go through the more tedious process to get a credit card… now you don't need to go to any banks, you don't need to produce any documents, and you can get a loan in maybe a couple of seconds.

We are always on the lookout for new data sources, or external providers, and whenever we see something that's interesting, we test it… In the end, it comes down to what can we pay per gini point of lift?

You have to operate in the realms of the known and not in the realms of ‘well, we think this happened’. And that's why you absolutely have to have a champion/ challenger strategy, as difficult as it may be.