Omnisient, the South African-founded fintech helping banks apply AI to anonymised and protected consumer data for credit scoring and precision marketing, has been named one of CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies 2026.
The recognition places Omnisient among a small group of African fintech companies featured in CNBC’s global list. Of the companies selected from across Africa, only four were South African, with Omnisient the only African-founded company listed in the Enterprise Fintech: Banking Solutions category.
Founded in Cape Town and now headquartered in the United Kingdom to support its <a href="https://absafricatv.com/international-criminal-court-stands-up-to-us-campaign-to-dismantle-it-brick-by-brick/” title=”International Criminal Court stands up to US campaign to dismantle it ‘brick by brick’”>international expansion, Omnisient has built technology that allows financial institutions to combine their anonymised consumer data with anonymised consumer data from partners across other industries. The analysis on their combined data enables financial institutions to draw new insights and build more accurate predictive models without exposing personal information or moving data outside each other’s control. Data is never exchanged and personal information is never exposed.
The platform is used in three main areas: improving credit risk assessment, detecting fraud across institutions, and helping financial institutions target the right customers more effectively. By providing institutions with a secure, neutral environment to apply AI to large, anonymised datasets from multiplee complete view of consumer behaviour
The technology has already demonstrated significant impact in South Africa. Through data collaborations between leading banks and one of Africa’s largest retail grocers, 38% of previously credit-invisible consumers in South Africa are now visible to banks, with 15% now qualifying for credit based on analysis of their anonymised shopping behaviour. The credit models built by applying AI to the combined anonymous consumer data within Omnisient have proven 41% more accurate at predicting whether someone will repay a loan than traditional approaches where no credit history exists.
Beyond financial inclusion, the platform has also helped financial institutions reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 74% while delivering more than seven times return on investment in advertising spend by enabling them to target only their optimal customers who were most likely to respond based on insights drawn from anonymised shopping behavior.
In 2025, Omnisient received a strategic investment from and entered into a global partnership with TransUnion, one of the world’s leading information and insights companies. The partnership is helping expand the use of Omnisient’s privacy-preserving data collaboration platform globally to enable financial institutions to securely and more rapidly discover new sources of alternative data across industries such as retail, healthcare, and telecommunications for credit risk and precision marketing.
Today, the company operates across North America, Brazil, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Africa.
“From day one, our vision has been to solve some of the world’s biggest problems through the ethical use of data,”said Jon Jacobson, co-founder and CEO of Omnisient.“More than a billion people still don’t have access to the financial services that build prosperity and resilience. Our privacy-preserving data collaboration platform is helping us build data ecosystems that let institutions securely access new sources of alternative data and make more informed decisions, so that every day, we get closer to solving that problem.”
As AI becomes central to the future of banking, Omnisient believes privacy-preserving data collaboration will become critical infrastructure for financial services worldwide and that Africa has an important role to play in building that future.
