There is a trending discussion going on asking people if they believe in materialism or minimalism? What is your take?

Minimalism is the freedom from the passion to possess. Even if we focus on removing everything that distracts us, there is still something that is useful to us. When it comes to adopting either of the lifestyles, we often calculate:

1. The Needs
2. The Financial Potential

While needs are never ending but the needs mentioned here are the ones without which we can’t survive. One of the needs is definitely a shelter. When you’re born and if you’re lucky enough, you have a shelter. When you grow and become independent, you have to find your shelter your way.

When your turn comes, either you choose to rent a house or to buy a house. Here comes the fix: Shall you choose materialism or minimalism? Or, NONE OF THESE?

Materialism here would mean you want to own the house. Perfect! Makes sense as the return on investment is higher with the time. But you might not be ready for this. Either you are on a constant move that you can’t think of owning and settling down, or you are far away from making money to buy the house.

Minimalism here would mean that you don’t want to own the house and would choose to rent. Perfect! Again makes sense. But for how long would you be paying the rent? How about paying the EMI for your own house while you travel the world? This will ensure that your investment with time grows.

Ultimately, if you end up figuring out your need to have the shelter, you have to calculate your financial potential. Home buying has never been a one-step transactional process.

If you make enough and have saved enough, you can buy a readymade home through entire down payment. But even this process takes your good amount of time in verifying your financial credibility.

And, if you can’t make the down payment, you have to borrow money.

Here comes the solution!

You can choose not to be materialistic and not even minimalistic by making yourself loan ready! Don’t just jump in and purchase things being materialistic, don’t even weed out the things being minimalistic, instead prepare yourself for the things that you will need at just the right time by being loan ready.

Ever thought if you’re loan ready? Or should you be loan ready?

Yes, you must be!

You should be well prepared before to opt-in for your investments at the right time for your future. The loan application and the loan approval process has been a cumbersome exercise in the conventional credit system. In traditional credit system, it takes days to verify your financial stability. From registration to application to eventual repayment requires decisions about credit limits, customer management, and collections.

To determine, if you are loan ready, I’m not asking you to check your credit score. In India, the CIBIL score will give you a three-digit number that represents your credit history. But this credit score is based on your past data.

The banks (the lenders) will ask you your present data including banks transaction, income, assets verification, employment and personal details (educational & professional).

KYS “Know Yourself” is the best alternative to KYC “Know Your Customer”

KYS will ensure that you know about your financial potential and financial risk. This will project if you are loan ready, or if you can be loan ready in near future. This will guide you to be aware and to be educated about what it takes to apply for the loan. Also, this will make certain that only you know your information and nobody else. And, this also ensures that you’re saved from the spam calls.

So how will you be loan ready through KYS?

This Bangalore based startup, WhatsLoan is building a Digital Loan Key that will be your unique financial identity.

If you opt-in for this Digital Loan Key, you can get your financial documents verified in seconds through DigiLocker and data-based validation. Post verification within seconds, this will release a unique financial key associated with your identity. The key is safely encrypted and the information will be owned only by you. You can choose to offer this to the lender at the right time and ask them to decrypt and get your verified details in seconds.

This has multifold benefits:

1. You can choose to be loan ready for the right time and not be materialistic or minimalistic for the time being.
2. Your financial risk information is with you.
3. You can choose to release this information at the right time to the lender.
4. You will reduce number of days to seconds for your loan approval through your verified financial details.
5. This digital verification makes the entire process paperless.
6. This takes AI (Artificial Intelligence), MI (Machine Learning), mobile based contact point verification and digital reference check to make your loan experience smooth and seamless.

Being loan ready makes you accountable that you know your self financial potential and you have the verified personal, financial and transactional information with you.

All of these is possible through your unique financial identity.

WhatsLoan provides the technology and enables you to have this identity through the Digital Loan Key.

So next time, when you have the fix between owning something or disowning something, check if you are loan ready for the future. This will hold you more responsible, accountable and future ready.