Bloomberg has named South African-founded fintech Omnisient one of its African Startups to Watch in 2026, recognising the company’s work in helping banks and insurers assess people who are excluded from affordable financial services because they lack traditional credit histories.
Bloomberg positioned Omnisient around a simple but powerful question: what if your grocery basket could unlock access to credit?
It is a question increasingly relevant to banks, insurers and lenders across Africa and other markets, where millions of people earn, spend and manage money responsibly but remain invisible to traditional credit scoring models. Without a formal credit history, many are declined for credit or offered products they cannot afford.
Omnisient helps financial institutions gain access new sources of alternative consumer behaviour data from retailers, telcos and other businesses to make better credit, risk and customer acquisition decisions.
The platform does not require companies to share or move raw customer data. Instead, organisations collaborate in a secure, privacy-preserving environment where anonymised data can be analysed using built-in analytics, AI and predictive modelling tools. These tools turn everyday behavioural signals, such as grocery shopping patterns, into insights lenders can use when traditional credit bureau data falls short.
In South Africa, Omnisient’s platform has already been used by leading banks and a major grocery retailer to test whether shopping behaviour can help predict credit risk. The results showed that banks were able to assess more than 8 million previously unscorable consumers, with 3,2-million people qualifying for credit who would otherwise have been declined due to lack of credit history.
The models built using shopping behaviour also improved the ability to predict loan repayment by 41%, with one participating bank projecting a 29% increase in credit revenue.
“What Bloomberg’s recognition captures is the real-world potential of alternative data when it is used safely,” says Jon Jacobson, CEO and co-founder of Omnisient. “A grocery basket can tell you something meaningful about a person’s financial behaviour. The challenge is enabling banks to use that insight without compromising consumer privacy or asking retailers to share raw customer data.”
Omnisient was one of 25 companies selected for Bloomberg’s 2026 African Startups to Watch list. South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya jointly led the list, with four companies each, highlighting the continued strength of Africa’s three most visible startup ecosystems.
Omnisient was founded in South Africa in 2019 by Jon Jacobson and Anton Grutzmacher and now operates internationally.