Africa

LONDON, 4 October 2022  – JUMO, a technology company advancing next-generation financial inclusion in emerging markets, today released VELA, a pioneering asset management engine built to give investors access to real social impact investments at the highest standards of governance and control.

VELA is a powerful asset management tool underpinned by JUMO’s proven AI and machine learning capabilities that seeks to democratise access to funding. VELA allocates multi-currency funds (US$ and crypto) to select portfolios, making it possible for qualifying investors to put money to work alongside pan-African banks and watch it perform in real time. 

Andrew Watkins-Ball, JUMO Founder and CEO, said: “This is another important step for us in making our technology easier to access. Whilst there is growing worldwide demand for both ESG & crypto investing, it is often viewed as either too high-risk or as delivering lower returns than traditional investments. VELA gives investors access to the same, proven infrastructure that banks use to power their businesses, giving them more control and less risk whilst accessing investments with measurable impact.”  

Since 2015, JUMO’s bank partners have received impressively predictable returns as a result of JUMO’s AI and machine learning. Portfolio information is ingested in real time to feed asset allocations and adjustments. Risk is diversified across more than 22 million individual loans per year, in six markets and across 13 products. 

VELA is a powerful tool to facilitate both returns for investors and growth and inclusion. JUMO’s core customer base are the backbone of their economies and access to credit at low prices allows them to invest in their businesses and their communities. Entrepreneurs on the ground benefit from lower lending rates and convenience, while capital providers and investors are rewarded with returns. JUMO’s banking as a service platform has been built to meet the needs of each contributor to the ecosystem. 

The launch of VELA follows JUMO’s US$120 million fundraise in November 2021 led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC, Visa and Kingsway. The round has supported the scaling of JUMO’s platform capacity and brought JUMO’s total funding to c.US$200 million.

To date, the JUMO platform has been used to make 130 million loans, totalling $4 billion, to more than 20 million people and small businesses in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Côte d’Ivoire.

For more information about VELA by JUMO and to follow the VELA journey, visit vela.jumo.com

ENDS

About JUMO

JUMO was founded in 2015 and is the market leading Banking as a Service platform that uses AI to power financial services in emerging markets.

JUMO offers savings and credit products to entrepreneurs in emerging markets, as well as financial services infrastructure to partners such as eMoney operators, mobile fintech platforms and banks.

The platform has two foundational capabilities:

• Core – which provides end-to-end, next generation banking infrastructure; 
• Unify – the Artificial Intelligence processor that transforms data to reduce the cost and risk of lending

In just over seven years of operation, JUMO has enabled the disbursement of more than US$4billion in loans and reached over 20 million customers and small businesses. They are active in six markets including Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Côte d’Ivoire.

JUMO earned B Corporation certification in September 2022, joining an international movement of 5,787 purpose-led businesses that meet B Corp’s high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. 

www.jumo.com

For media enquiries, please contact:

JUMO@brunswickgroup.com or +44 20 7404 5959

Washington D.C. June, 7th 2022 – Asante Financial Services Group joins the SME Finance Forum as the newest member of our global membership network. Our members are SME financing experts from 80+ countries who share the common goal of expanding access to finance to small businesses worldwide through knowledge exchange and innovation.

“When we started in 2012, we were in an exploratory phase for the first few years. Since 2016, we’ve been implementing our mission to build a global membership to support better SME financing, and since then, we’ve established a network with over 240 active member institutions, which operate in over 190 countries sharing the common purpose of helping under-served enterprises.
We are delighted to welcome the Asante Group to further grow our mission.” said Matthew Gamser, CEO of the SME Finance Forum.

Asante Financial Services Group is a credit-led neobank for MSME’s in Africa, with operations across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Nigeria. Asante aims to reach operations in 10 countries by 2025 with over 2 million MSME owner clients.

"By joining the SME Finance Forum, we hope to gain new insights and share experiences’ said Chidi Okpala, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Asante Financial Services Group.
 

About SME Finance Forum
The SME Finance Forum was established by the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) in 2012 as a knowledge center for data, research, and best practice in promoting SME finance. As an implementing partner for the GPFI, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) was tasked with managing the initiative. The Forum operates a global membership network of +240 members that brings together financial institutions, technology companies, and development finance institutions to share knowledge, spur innovation, and promote the growth of SMEs. 
To see all SME Finance Forum members, please visit: https://www.smefinanceforum.org/members/member-list

About Asante Financial Services Group
Asante Financial Services Group is a Credit-Led Neo Bank that supports Africa’s growth through provision of financial services to growing businesses. Learn more at:

Website: https://asantefinancegroup.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asante-financial-service-group/?originalSubdomain=ke
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077130330015
Twitter: https://twitter.com/group_asante

Across the globe, e-commerce is thriving. The e-commerce market in Africa is expected to reach $84 billion by 2030. The number of online shoppers has increased by an average of 18 percent every year since 2014, with similar growth anticipated over the next decade. 

The IFC’s latest report Women and E-commerce in Africa is the first large-scale use of platform data in the region to inform the extent of women’s participation on e-commerce and how online platforms can benefit women business owners. 

Read the report here>

Promoting good practices in women entrepreneur financing has always been an important focus of the SME Finance Forum. Financial inclusion for women has always been challenging, particularly in emerging and developing markets where women entrepreneurs have lower access to capital, which severely restricts their progress and ability to contribute to the national economies. The COVID-19 crisis makes financial inclusion for female entrepreneurs even more challenging as it poses serious threats to the financial stability of SMEs, and especially to women entrepreneurs. On Thursday, April 30, 2020, at 8 a.m., the Forum is organizing the sixth virtual roundtable on how institutions serving women-owned businesses in emerging markets are addressing these challenges, supporting them with innovative financial solutions during these unprecedented times of COVID-19 pandemic. In this story, originally posted on IFC's website you will read about the challenges of women entrepreneurs in Africa. 

For Ada Osakwe, business was booming. Her Nuli Juice Company added six new stores in Lagos last year, and she had begun to use new technologies to expand her customer base even further in 2020. Then the Coronavirus arrived, and life changed in an instant. “This is just a completely new animal,” Osakwe, the founder of Nigeria’s Agrolay Ventures and Nuli Juice, says. “Things are changing every second.”

Osakwe, whose enterprise purchased nearly 200 tons of fresh produce from local farmers last year, was forced to shut down all of her shops and send her workers home. She paid employees’ salaries for March but doesn’t know what will happen in April. Her suppliers would also feel the pain.

[...]

Women and women-led businesses are vital drivers of economic growth and prosperity. Banks experience lower NPLs [nonperforming loans], deposit stability, increased market share, and higher customer loyalty when they provide comprehensive financial and operational solutions to women-led businesses,” said Jessica Schnabel, global head of IFC’s Banking on Women. “But too often, women are overlooked in the design of financial solutions. Now more than ever, it’s important for banks and fintechs to specifically and intentionally include women in their COVID-19 responses.”

IFC’s $8 billion COVID-19 fast-track response is already being deployed to support emerging market financial institutions and companies and their employees affected by the pandemic, as part of a $14 billion World Bank Group package. The majority of IFC’s fast track funding will be used to invest in client financial institutions to enable them to continue offering trade finance, working capital support to help companies pay their bills and their workers, and long-term financing for companies experiencing disruptions in supply chains. IFC’s Banking on Women is also ramping up efforts to provide investment, advisory expertise, and business-case data to financial institutions in emerging markets to help them respond and offer medium-term financial solutions for women business customers.

Read the full interview here. Watch the interview in this video.