Modalku and Carro Announce "Co-Investment" in Bank Index

Research my capital (known as Funding Societies in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand) together with automotive trading platform Carro announced a joint stock investment (co-investment) at PT Bank Index Selindo (Bank Index). There is no mention of the value of this joint investment.

In his official statement, Modalku Co-founder & CEO Reynold Wijaya said, this collaboration supports Modalku's business strategy to enter the industry neobanks. In addition, he rated the Bank Index to be businesses the right way to empower and develop MSMEs.

"Since 2015, the Modalku Group has been a partner to the banking industry in all of our operational areas. The partnership with Bank Index will bring collaboration fintech and banking to a higher level. We want to support MSMEs across banking, payments, loans and digital services," said Reynold.

Carro Indonesia CEO Jeremy Ong also said that the co-investments This is a natural option to be part of the journey to build capabilities and infrastructure in the automotive ecosystem, both in terms of purchasing, MSMEs, to insurance.

Carro previously also entered the ranks Allo Bank investors with Bukalapak and Grab.

For information, Bank Index is a private bank with 52 office networks in Greater Jakarta, Java, Sumatra, Bali and Batam. Bank Index has a focus on the MSME segment and operates in the commercial supply chain.

The Modalku Group is a funding platform for MSMEs in Southeast Asia that has licenses in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and currently also operates in Vietnam. Modalku offers loans of up to IDR 2 billion for MSMEs who have difficulty with business capital.

According to the latest data, the Modalku Group has disbursed business loans of Rp. 33,02 trillion to the number of transactions reaching 5 million MSME loans.

Financial inclusion via neobanks

A number of actors fintech are busy announcing their collaboration or synergy with banks. The purpose of this collaboration is to expand financial services, especially to the MSME segment and unbanked.

Previously, KoinWorks collaborated with Bank Sampoerna to launch the MSME neobank service KoinWorks NEO. At that time, KoinWorks Co-founder & CEO Benedicto Haryono said that neobank was the initial gateway to increase the capabilities of SMEs that were still underdeveloped. underserved and underbanked, before upgrading and deserving access to credit.

As summarized in AFTECH Annual Report 2021OJK noted that the financial literacy index in Indonesia rose 8,3% from 29,7% in 2016 to 38% in 2019. The growth of this index indicates the importance of expanding services fintech to the countryside. Meanwhile, 69% of fintech players have served this area.

However, the perpetrator fintech Indonesia still faces major challenges to expand its business outside Jakarta, where 23% and 19% of respondents admitted that it is difficult to expand outside Java and rural areas due to financial literacy (55%), infrastructure (44%), and culture (20%). ).

Meanwhile, this report mentions fintech services in the neobanks, IDD, wealth managementand crowdfunding securities still in the growth phase due to new regulatory factors for banks, especially related to digital banks, so that the market is not yet optimal in terms of product and service offerings.

However, these four categories are considered starting to gain traction in the market in line with increasing efforts by actors in the financial ecosystem to expand financial inclusion outside the cities. tier 1.