The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2024
Banco del Pacífico's Gamer Loan accepts gaming accounts as collateral for loans
When 8 in 10 young Ecuadorians could not pledge a car or home, Banco del Pacífico built a loan product that treats their gaming accounts as collateral.
Banco del Pacífico
What it had to solve
Banco del Pacífico found that eight out of ten young Ecuadorians could not access loans because they owned no assets like cars or homes. It wanted a way to give that excluded generation a path to credit.
How it works
Eight out of ten young Ecuadorians could not get a loan from Banco del Pacífico because they owned none of the assets banks traditionally demand: no car, no home. The customers were not inherently risky; the definition of collateral simply had no room for anything they did own.
The creative move was to change the definition instead of the customer. The bank created a new financial product, Gamer Loan, that lets users present their gaming accounts as collateral to obtain loans, turning accounts conventional lending treated as worthless into access to credit that had been out of reach.
The idea worked because it solved the product problem rather than papering over it: instead of a campaign asking banks to be kinder to young people, it gave the bank a lending rule that recognized a young person's real assets. Inclusion stopped being a message and became a loan application.
The work is kept in the D&AD Awards archive as a financial-inclusion idea built on a new asset class. The source page records no loan volumes or sales figures.
Why it lands
- It attacked the actual barrier: not young people's character or income, but a collateral definition that only recognized cars and homes.
- Gaming accounts were assets the target group already owned and valued, so inclusion did not require waiting until they could afford a house first.
- Making the product real rather than symbolic meant the bank's claim could be verified by applying for a loan.
- It gave the bank a customer base that conventional lending rules still excluded, turning an inclusion idea into a lending advantage.
What it did
The product gave young Ecuadorians who owned no car or home a route to credit that had previously been out of reach, making an asset class banks ignored count for something. The source page records no loan volumes or sales figures; the work is kept in the D&AD Awards archive.
What you can take
When an excluded group is locked out by an old definition of collateral, ask what they do own and make that the proof: the bank's asset definition is the creative material.
Since then
Gamer Loan entered the D&AD Awards archive as a financial-inclusion product that let young customers pledge the gaming accounts they already owned. Because the change lived in the bank's lending rules rather than in a one-off campaign, the route to credit remained available after the marketing push ended. The source page records no loan volumes, so the case rests on the product mechanism itself: an asset class banks had ignored was turned into collateral.
Sources
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