The development of financial technologies has made financial services more accessible to people who were previously deemed unbankable. On the other hand, the lack of barriers to entry has led to a flood of illegal agents, who have been found to cause harm by their inappropriate debt collection method and high interest rates and charges. On Wednesday, 27 February 2019 Bank Indonesia (BI) Institute hosted an FKP seminar

Source: Pranata, 2018

Nika Pranata (Pusat Studi Ekonomi/P2E, LIPI) who presented his research on the use of big data in the form of Google Play reviews as a tool to monitor Peer to Peer Lending (P2PL) applications. Nika Pranata scraped Google Play data from March 2016 until August 2018, which consist of 110 P2PL applications and 40,650 reviews, and filtered these applications based on the legality aspect rating (i.e. whether they are listed under the Otoritas Jasa Keuangan/OJK or the Financial Services Authority), appropriateness of debt collection, and interest rate and other charges, based on specific keywords from customer reviews. Using this method, he found that the majority of P2PL applications (85 out of 110) on Google play are illegal. However, he found that the legal PSPL have higher average ratings. These findings show how OJK still needs to improve its surveillance and consumer protection function. Nika Pranata suggested that OJK utilize big data as an early warning system for P2PL applications and that they work together with application platforms such as Google Play to block illegal providers and to impose severe sanctions to offenders.

For the complete presentation and Q&A session, please refer to the video and materials provided.