The country’s largest financial-technology firm, Fintq, has accepted eight more lenders to its small and medium enterprise (SME)-lending program and online venture that will build on its P20-billion loan portfolio among its 50 multisectoral global partners.
The financial arm of PLDT will sign on July 11 its partnership with the companies in providing loan services to businesses and individuals through Lendr, a 24/7 online platform and one-stop loans shop accessible on mobile phones.
The technology, which was codeveloped by Voyager Innovations of Smart Communications Inc., will serve Eastwest Bank, CARD SME Bank Inc., FundKo, Asialink Finance Corporation, Small Business Corporation of the Department of Trade and Industry, Navigate Global, The League of Barangays and Shop Japan.
“In the past two years, we have disbursed through Lendr over P20 billion in loan volume. While we have just started with both SME/business and agri/crop loans, we are projecting that both would account for more than 20 percent of such volume, or approximately P4 billion,” Fintq President and CEO Lito Villanueva told the BusinessMirror.
Fintq aims to complement the delivery of SME-loan products with nationwide coverage. At present, the financial-technology firm has a market reach of 100 percent of the provinces, 93 percent of cities and 14 percent of municipalities.
Last month Fintq tied up with other business lenders and expanded their operations, mostly in the Visayas.
These include Atram Trust Corp.’s Seedbox Technologies, JK Capital Finance, Dun & Bradstreet, Financial Executives of the Philippines, Cebuana Lhuillier Bank, Philippine Business Bank, Cash Credit, Insular Savings Bank, Bayad Center and Development Bank of the Philippines.
Fintq aims to draw over 200 bank and nonbank partners by the end of the year under the National Retail Payment System of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which was launched in 2015 to enable cashless transactions.
With its cloud technology, the country’s first and only data-sharing and streamlining tool approved by the BSP, Fintq strives to pull unbanked individuals in the most remote and smallest communities into formal lending institutions.
“This whole idea is premised on leapfrogging [the] BSP’s mission in realizing the immediate growth of financial transactions in the country to 20 percent from the current 1 percent or 2 percent by year 2020. It is simply doing everybody’s share in promoting inclusive digital finance through public and private collaboration,” Villanueva said.
Based on Fintq’s survey, 80 percent of their borrowers come from the provinces, and 47 percent prefer to apply for loans outside banking hours.
“The realization that neither the fintechs [financial technologies] of this world or any banks are not really the ones providing such competition, but the consumer themselves who dictate what and how banking services best serve them—quick, easy, accessible, affordable and hassle-free, among others. Note that the key to keep one’s relevance is future-proofing one’s business,” he added.
