A Year in Review

Just a year ago, countries all around the globe hurried to pull down the shutters on their airports and economies took a hit, but today paints a different picture; across the world, country borders are opening up to vaccinated persons for international travel, economies are preparing for an upturn, and governments like that of Singapore are attempting to embrace Covid-19 as endemic. 

At Funding Societies, we, too, have many milestones to remember this year. As we bring 2021 to a close, we’d like to highlight the strides we’ve taken towards driving financial inclusion for Southeast Asia ✨  

At the start of 2021, we sealed a partnership with Singapore’s leading haulier network, Haulio, to speed up payments to its fleet of haulier partners across the island. This collaboration is the first of its kind across the FinTech and Haulage sectors, coming at the right juncture as the logistics sector remains a key pillar of Singapore’s economy. Over 86,000 supply chain workers across 5,300 enterprises are considered essential workers and continue to attend to the demands of container movement even through the pandemic and today’s recovering economy. Funding Societies’ pre-approved credit facilities allow Haulio’s partners to enjoy access to early payment services in as quick as 7 days, in comparison to the industry standard of 30 days and more. We are glad to say that to date, we have disbursed over S$1.3 million in financing under this programme. 

And right as we marked 6 years to the month of our establishment, we expanded into our fourth market in Southeast Asia – Thailand! Funding Societies operates under the debt crowdfunding license given by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission. This expansion comes after more than a year working with Thai regulators and planning for market entry. ​​In the Kingdom, over 3 million SMEs operate in various industries and more than 60% of them experienced a drop in revenue due to the pandemic. Our first debt investment campaign raised THB 2 million on behalf of a commercial shopping mall client in just over 72 hours, funded by a pool of retail and high networth investors.

In the same month of February, our Group crossed another milestone – we disbursed S$2 billion in financing to MSMEs across Southeast Asia! 💰 

In the later half of this year, we raised US$18 million in Debt led by a trio of financial institutions. Including funding received from European impact investors such as Triodos Investment Management for our Indonesian business loans, we continue to raise institutional debt for funding the needs of micro, small and medium enterprises in Southeast Asia.

In November, we released our Economic Impact Survey. To mark half a decade of lending, the Survey measures the social and economic impact of Funding Societies’ financing on MSMEs across Southeast Asia. The survey applies the Multi-Regional Input Output global value chain (MRIO-GVC) method of estimating sectoral contribution, which is pioneered by the Asian Development Bank, and we’re glad to find that 72% of the respondents said their revenues would decrease if not for our business financing. 

In the same month, we also won 3rd place in the ASEAN Fintech category at this year’s Singapore Fintech Festival Global Fintech Awards 🎉 This award is given by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

To round up the year, we’re happy to announce that 38.11% of our new investors in 2021 are referred by friends and family! This only means we’re doing something right for you. As the year comes to a close, we are also taking time to prepare for more exciting things in 2022, so stay tuned! 

Wishing all of you happy holidays and a happy new year! 🎇

 

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Farouq
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