Funding Societies

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are a critical driving force in Southeast Asian economies, accounting for 69% of the national labour force, according to the Asian Development Bank. However, Southeast Asia faces a massive gap in financing for unbanked populations, with over 60% of SMEs unable to get a loan when they need financing.

Funding Societies | Modalku (FSMK) was incorporated in Singapore in 2015 with the vision to close this billion-dollar funding gap. To identify the right customers, FSMK not only analyses traditional data, such as financial statements and macroeconomics, but alternative data as well to fill missing gaps in customer profiles. Their model also gives them speed and efficiency of underwriting, enabling them to operate at scale and serve the massive number of customers across the region.

Today, Funding Societies is the largest unified SME digital finance platform in Southeast Asia – a nod to the origins of its brand, which references a pair of hands woven together in a handshake, as a symbol of Funding Societies partnering SMEs to help them thrive in the economy.

FSMK’s IP management journey has allowed it to be licensed in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, registered in Malaysia, and operational in Vietnam. Its rich base of technical know-how, data, proprietary solutions, and trade secrets are also protected. Since its incorporation, FSMK has disbursed over US$3 billion over more than 5 million transactions of business financing to almost 100,000 MSMEs across the region.

“We’ve been building solutions by integrating expertise from both Fin and Tech, i.e., financial risk management and technical know-how. Singapore has a progressive regulatory and commercial environment allowing us to build a thriving FinTech business model within reasonable boundaries. The infrastructure, talent and ecosystem enable us to develop innovation, branding and services for Singapore and Southeast Asia.”

- Mr Kelvin Teo, Co-founder & Group CEO, Funding Societies | Modalku

As a hub for cloud services, Singapore has major service providers and one of the fastest, most reliable fiber-optic internet networks for businesses. FSMK also required a combination of expertise that are hard to find in single individuals; business background combined with the technical ability required for analytics – but they have been able to find this combination in Singapore. With this perfect mix of right infrastructure and skills, FSMK was able to use Singapore as its launchpad for growth.

FSMK has begun offering solutions beyond lending, such as payments and collections. FSMK has also tripled its Gross Transaction Value (GTV) year-on-year through its proprietary business expense solution Elevate, and its integration of CardUp’s payments solutions.

Constantly innovating, FSMK has also earned numerous accolades. It was given the MAS FinTech Award in 2016, the Global SME Excellence Award at the United Nations’ ITU Telecom World in 2017, Fintech Top 100 by KPMG in 2018, Brands for Good in 2019, and recognised by IDC as amongst the 5 fastest growing FinTechs in Singapore and given the Stevie® Award in 2020. In 2021, it won the MAS FinTech Award for the second time, and received the Platinum award for Responsible Digital Innovator of the Year at the 2022 Global SME Finance Awards organised by IFC (under the World Bank Group).

Find out more at www.fundingsocieties.com ↗ (opens in new tab)