UBX Philippines Corp. expects a four-fold increase in loans processed via its online lending platform this year as the lender expects partnerships to pull through.
UBX Managing Director for Lending Marcy Pilar-Inajada said their bullishness emanates on the back of the platform’s “remarkable” growth in 2021, when it processed over P6 billion in loans by more than 40,000 micro-scale, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs).
This year, Pilar-Inajada said, the fintech subsidiary of UnionBank of the Philippines Inc. aims to process roughly P33.5 billion in loans, 6-fold higher than the volume last year.
Pilar-Inajada told the BusinessMirror they developed the platform called “SeekCap” to reach MSMEs “who traditionally have no access to financing to grow their businesses due to the hefty requirements of business banking.”
“We believe that by democratizing access to loans, we will be able to help more growing businesses expand their operations and help in the recovery of the overall economy this year,” she said.
Pilar-Inajada said SeekCap capitalizes on its partners’ wide user base to offer loans to businesses.
This year, too, UBX plans to link the platform with other MSME ecosystems, as well as e-commerce, franchising and wholesale players to further expand its reach.
“The opportunity for SeekCap is huge, given that 99.51 percent of all businesses in the Philippines are MSMEs,” Inajada told the BusinessMirror. “Our goal is to reach 100,000 new customers this year or about 10 percent of the total growing businesses in the country.”
According to information supplied by UBX, the platform “simplifies the processing of business loans.” “Business loans may be processed in as fast as 24 hours, which is significantly faster than the minimum 30-day approval time for most banks,” the digital bank said.
UBX also plans to bring local governments into the platform’s “end-to-end” digital lending ecosystem to encourage their citizens to grow their businesses through financing. According to Pilar-Inajada, UBX has been working on this goal as early as 2020.
UBX, to note, linked “SeekCap” with the local government of Pasig to introduce the city’s business loan program. The program brings lenders and borrowers closer via the UBX platform, streamlining the process of getting a business loan while making financing more accessible for small businesses in the city, according to the UBX executive.
“Our strategy is to activate as many channels as we can,” Pilar-Inajada told the BusinessMirror. “With the partnerships with the government, we hope to activate more channels within the different cities and provinces, especially in the far-flung areas where the unserved and underserved are.”