Carroll, a well-known creator of digital banks for the underprivileged, describes to FinTech Futures how difficult it has been for him to ignore the "glaring truth" of the $5.7 trillion funding gap that SMEs face globally.

Carroll notes that the use of traditional lending models and their restricted access to comprehensive data sets are detrimental to "the bit at the bottom that remains underserved," despite acknowledging that the industry's current players are actively working to close this gap in their lending strategies.

"I believe that banks see this enormous potential to be profitable, sustainable, and to support underbanked SMEs, but they simply lack the technology to do it," Carroll asserts.

Before helping to co-found the Vietnamese digital bank TNEX in 2019, he had a number of senior positions in the digital space at the Bank of Ireland and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

Carroll describes how his most recent business, SMEApprove, aims to provide banks access to larger and more diverse data sets in order to improve their ability to make loan decisions.

By comparing loan applications to over 300 additional data points, the open API-connected platform employs AI to analyze loan applications and assist lenders in making better-informed judgments on the creditworthiness of their SME clients.

Carroll refers to SMEApprove's portfolio function as "sticking a loop on a loan" since it helps banks keep an eye on loans after they are administered.

Carroll discloses that Mbanq, a company implementing CDaaS solutions on all client platforms, has become a partner of the Dublin-based start-up as a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS).

Carroll created InclusionFS last year with the goal of assisting banks in emerging economies to develop more socially inclusive policies. He currently serves as CEO of InclusionFS, which aligns with his interests in SMEApprove.