Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - Seventh Session with Fintechs 

The SME Finance Forum since its inception in 2015 has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping connecting members to different technologies and opportunities. Through our virtual marketplace, we offer in particular a monthly pitch session. 

On February 16th, the seventh SME Finance Forum Marketplace session gathered five fintech companies offering services ranging from supply chain financing, digitized banking, to e-lending, trade finance, and risk monitoring. Read below a summary of their presentations.

Elevating small business banking: Helping community banks to scale digitally 

Asenso Finance is a portfolio firm pertaining to Talino Venture Labs, the global venture studio for inclusive fintech, and was represented by Kenny Chang. Asenso Finance is a service firm that provides not only technology but also operations, offering more than just a platform to assist community banks. Their solutions help those banks scaling up digitally, securing risk management, and administering low-interest, no-collateral loans for American small businesses. 

Asenso Finance's approach is to assist small businesses with technology and experience while also reducing paperwork with digital solutions, allowing banks to give low-interest rates to small business owners while also controlling risk for lenders and funders by allowing a greater repayment rate. The "social borrowing circle," a proven concept for delivering zero-collateral loans while getting greater payment rates by utilizing a peer-based social borrowing circle, is at the core of Asento’s approach.  

Fintech Group/Kapilink: Supply chain financing and collections solution 

Samuel Ouko, who represented Kapilink on behalf of the Fintech Group, highlighted how this firm is able to integrate business technology features, such as business process automation and workflow management. The company focuses on innovation and digital transformation, it is a cutting-edge cloud-based platform that allows suppliers to get paid as quickly as possible. Kapilink facilitates supply chain financing and collections by building an ecosystem of financers, large corporates and MSMEs together on one platform that improves the working capital management and liquidity generation. The invention streamlines SME funding for clients, making it more convenient and secure. For financiers, it's a game changer because they can be assured of all collections on the platform. One of the issues that financers experience is that once they start working with SMEs and finance them, they must track them down and round after them.

With the platform, they can have the clients agree to pay the financers immediately. Because it is an open API platform, it is also a partnership model in which they are not selling the system but rather collaborating based on a revenue share model. As a result, there is no license price, no maintenance fee, and no enhancement fee for any improvements. SMEs claim that lenders do not really understand them, which means they must wait a long time to apply for funding, and by the time the financing arrives, the opportunity is usually gone. Thanks to Kapilink, the suppliers lock the funds for several weeks or even months, awaiting payment due date. This platform is open to buyers, sellers, and financiers from any industry. 

Fyndoo: Making lending effortless through business lending 

Dimitry Oosthoek represented Fyndoo, whose business model is designed keeping in mind that SME lending shouldn’t be complex. These days, platforms like Airbnb, UberEATS or Netflix provide us with a unifying engagement and allow different parties to connect with each other. Fyndoo’s engagement layer enables lenders to create fast and easy customer journeys through a portal that supports loan origination and loan management. In the end it’s all about giving your clients the same experience as if they were ordering their favorite meal. Fyndoo is the platform on which lenders, advisors and customers all benefit at the same time.  

StockNow Buy Now, Pay Later: The fintech platform for supply chain finance in cash-first markets 

Nomanini was represented by Christopher Gwanmesia. StockNow Pay Later is a technology company that helps retailers get access to responsible, affordable, and simple working capital in the form of stock advances. It connects credible financial service providers with third-party FMCG channels in the informal trade to serve informal retailers at scale. The capabilities of general trade retailers are being used to boost enterprises by combining new digital financial services with current distribution networks, allowing clients to have more capital. Nomanini assists in the disbursement of loans in the African informal markets (more than 150 million informal retailers).

Retailers desire to expand their operations, and financial service providers can assist them by providing loans, but they face numerous hurdles, such as high acquisition costs. FMCGs confront numerous obstacles in serving the general trade due to a lack of cash on hand at the time of delivery of goods, which results in high operational inefficiencies. StockNow Buy Now, Pay Later is an end-to-end digital solution for keeping merchant shelves stocked. It is based on the customers' purchasing history to determine how much loan they'll be given.  

Rubix: Providing assistance in debt recovery while monitoring B2B credit supply and compliance risk 

Rubix, led by Kaushal Sampat, focuses on data analytics and technology, leveraging 120+ data sources via APIs and assisting in the creation of scoring models across 256 sectors. It assists banks, insurance firms, and large corporate customers in obtaining finance for SMEs. Rubix's services are built on automated risk management and monitoring platform solutions. Rubix uses the automated risk management and monitoring solution platform to confirm the identity of counter parties, analyze and monitor risk, avoid fraud, and collect outstanding debts. The focus is on the supply chain, which has been a major issue recently. They are looking at the financial strength of suppliers and vendors, as well as compliance risk throughout the distribution and supply chain. There is a Rubix Arms platform that provides automated credit risk modeling, allowing them to provide credit risk limitations to their clients.

They can also provide an early warning system that allows clients to monitor counterparties, allowing them to have portfolio scoring. The clients are looking at the entire portfolio rather than the individual entity, and everything is automated and completely digital. Rubix assists banks, financial institutions, and corporations in resolving credit losses and supply chain interruptions caused by a large number of fraudulent suppliers. Rubix assists banks in obtaining all relevant information about their customers so that they may quickly and easily lend them money. Rubix's most powerful feature is that it develops proprietary algorithms to estimate income, cost, profitability, and other financial indicators for proprietorship for whose financial data is not readily available in the public domain. 

 
About the fintech presenters

Asenso Finance 
A technology company providing lending-as-a-service solutions to enable community banks and CDFIs to offer low-interest, zero-collateral loans to underserved and underrepresented small business owners.

Fintech Group (Kapilink) 
Cutting-edge cloud-based platform that allows suppliers to get paid as quickly as possible. Kapilink facilitates supply chain financing and collections by building an ecosystem of financers, large corporates and MSMEs together on one platform that improves the working capital management and liquidity generation.  

Fyndoo 
Fyndoo enables lenders to create fast and easy customer journeys through a portal that supports loan origination and loan management. 

Nomanini 
StockNow Pay later is a technology company operating mostly in the African countries to help retailers have access to responsible, affordable and simple working capital in the form of stock advances by connecting credible financial service providers with third-party FMCG channels within the informal trade to serve informal retailers at scale. 

Rubix Data Sciences
Rubix helps validate the identity of counter parties, assess, and monitor risk and avoid fraud and then collect outstanding debts by using an automated risk management and monitoring solution platform. 

If you want to learn more about these fintechs, listen to the recording of the marketplace session HERE 

Speakers’ presentations are also available HERE for Members on our Member's Portal.