SCORE360 and APIF: a working session on supporting the pilot phase

On Thursday 24 September 2026, SCORE360 Sarl held a working session with the Agence de Promotion de l’Inclusion Financière (APIF), Côte d’Ivoire’s financial inclusion promotion agency, at the agency’s offices in Abidjan-Plateau. SCORE360 presented its credit risk assessment solution for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), along with a proposal for institutional support of its pilot phase, run with Ivorian banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs). The agreements with APIF are currently under review.

Making viable SMEs easier to assess

SCORE360 positions itself as a technology provider: it helps banks and MFIs assess SME credit risk, to make financing easier to access in Côte d’Ivoire and across the UEMOA region.

Many SMEs run a real business yet remain hard to assess with traditional methods: poorly documented income, limited credit history, scattered data. Analysing them is costly. SCORE360 targets exactly these businesses, alongside existing schemes: the BCEAO’s SME/SMI financing support scheme, the Creditinfo West Africa credit bureau, guarantee funds (GARI Fund, African Guarantee Fund) and the SME credit offers of banks and MFIs.

The solution relies on artificial intelligence and federated learning. Each institution trains a model on its own data; only encrypted model updates are exchanged, and raw data stays with the institution. Using alternative data from SMEs’ commercial activity, the SCORE360 engine computes a score between 300 and 850, with its main explanatory factors, alerts and continuous risk monitoring. The score is a decision-support tool: the lending decision rests solely with the financial institution.

Each institution keeps full control of its data. Every operation is logged, can be audited and remains subject to human validation. SCORE360 operates in compliance with BCEAO regulations and under ARTCI oversight for personal data protection.

Serving the national financial inclusion strategy

SCORE360’s approach complements APIF’s work and benefits every stakeholder. Financial institutions can better control credit losses, cut analysis costs and lend more to SMEs. SMEs can make the most of their real activity data and access financing suited to their repayment capacity. For the State, it channels capital towards the productive economy, encourages businesses to formalise and supports job-creating SMEs: all goals of the national financial inclusion strategy, which APIF implements.

Project milestones

• 2022-2025: proof of concept; scoring engine designed and tested on experimental data.
• February 2026: SCORE360 Sarl founded.
• 20 August 2026: SCORE360 Sarl named a 2026 Global Recognition Award laureate.
• Target November 2026: launch of a six- to nine-month pilot phase with one bank and two microfinance institutions.
• Target 2027: results assessment, then roll-out to other institutions.