Digital lending: Finja disburses over 50,000 loans to businesses, salaried individuals

ISLAMABAD: Finja, Pakistan's leading digital lending platform, announced Tuesday that it has disbursed over 50,000 unsecured digitally scored Islamic and conventional loans to businesses and salaried individuals covering small businessmen and consumer lending.

According to an announcement of the company here on Tuesday, Finja has closed $9 million of a $10 million Series-A1 financing round.

This latest round brings in new investor ICU ventures, with all previous institutional investors participating again including BeeNext, Vostok Emerging Finance, Quona Capital and Gray MacKenzie Engineering Services (a Descon company).

Under the terms of the financing, the company has the flexibility to raise an additional $1 million as a part of this round.

The Finja subsidiaries operate under dual licensing regimes of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) for its lending and digital payments businesses.

With this first-of-its-kind support from both regulators, Finja has forged digital partnerships with banks, the FMCGs, distributors, kiryana stores, and small businesses. The company has clocked over Rs100 billion in transactional volume with its assets under management growing in excess of 110 percent during the pandemic year.

Supported by the credit books of its partner banks, Finja has disbursed over 50,000 unsecured digitally scored Islamic and conventional loans to businesses and salaried individuals.

Small business and consumer lending represents a Rs10 trillion (USD $60 billion) market in Pakistan of which less than four percent is currently penetrated.

As a result of this sector being neglected, small businesses have largely struggled to grow due to unavailability of capital.

With this new capital injection along with our strong partnerships with the SECP, the SBP, banks, the FMCGs, distributors and so many other parts of the supply-chain and payment ecosystem, we are fully equipped and supported by the industry to rapidly scale to create unprecedented impact, said Qasif Shahid, Finja's Co-Founder and CEO.

Qasif previously launched mobile banking products in Singapore, East Africa, UAE, and Pakistan.

Finja's Co-Founder and Chairman Monis Rahman added that we are excited to scale our efforts to help small businesses and consumers reach their goals with dignity.

We are grateful for the support of some of the world's best fintech funds which have invested in Pakistan for the first time through Finja. Monis is one of Pakistan's digital pioneers and runs Rozee.pk, Pakistan's largest jobs platform.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020