Dr. Leary and Dr. Teresa Zhou coauthored an article examining how rapid growth in digital lending across ASEAN is creating new regulatory gaps, consumer risks, and dispute exposure tied to algorithmic credit decisions.

The article explains how the expansion of buy-now-pay-later services, peer-to-peer lending, and app-based microcredit is transforming access to finance across Southeast Asia, while simultaneously introducing complex legal and economic risks. Drawing on recent enforcement actions, regulatory developments, and court decisions across jurisdictions including Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore, the article highlights how gaps in licensing frameworks, data governance, and supervisory coordination are increasing the likelihood of disputes. It further examines how reliance on alternative data and algorithmic underwriting raises novel issues around transparency, bias, and causation in credit decisions—issues that may require rigorous economic analysis in litigation and arbitration to assess how credit decisions were made and whether alleged harms can be substantiated.