Receives Pre-Series A Funding, Wise Egg Launches Financial Product Aggregator “MoneyDuck” in Indonesia

Startups fintech Singaporean Wise Egg announces the acquisition of pre-series A funding with instruments convertible notes led by Genesia Ventures, which was also a previous investor in the early-stage round. New investors who participated were Money Ventures and a number of angel investors. No mention of the amount the company got in this round.

The company will use this fresh fund to build teams in Indonesia and Thailand, as well as expand its network expert and recruitment engineer. Going forward, MoneyDuck plans to expand its business to other Southeast Asian countries by improving features that support the sales process for professionals.

General Partner of Genesia Ventures Takahiro Suzuki said, there are still many consumers in Southeast Asia who experience limited access to financial services, even though economic growth in the region continues to experience a growth trend. "This business is in accordance with six of our challenges, namely 'Enriching People's Lives' and 'Equality of Information and Opportunities', so we are investing again in this round after the previous round," he said in an official statement, Wednesday (1/12). ).

In Southeast Asia, the productive age population continues to grow, creating a population pyramid diagram where the younger generation has more population than the older generation. This will give birth to a “demographic bonus” in the future. And as income grows, people can access financial services and products.

Financial products such as insurance, loans, and product innovation fintech has been offered in the market and continues to grow, but there are many challenges to be faced. One of the challenges is the lack of public financial literacy so that it is difficult for them to enjoy the benefits of financial services optimally.

Wise Egg is the company behind MoneyDuck, a financial solutions platform for consumers and financial providers. Wise Egg's Founder & CEO Takashi Matsuura said, "Through MoneyDuck, we want to increase user access to financial services, create efficient relationships between consumers and financial companies, and contribute to creating a richer life by solving financial inclusion and social problems.

"MoneyDuck is not only trying to provide financial inclusion solutions for the public as users of financial services, but also solutions for financial providers so that their financial services are appropriate," said Matsuura.

This solution is not much different from that offered by similar players in Indonesia, such as: CheckAja, Pay attention, Lifepal and used to be cultivated by GoBear until it finally went out of business. But the added value that MoneyDuck offers is that it allows users to get financial advice from expert through the chat feature on MoneyDuck, WhatsApp, or other communication platforms.

From the side expert, they will be able to find leads and conduct promotions, and gain access to a dashboard to contact potential customers filtered by their profile. Meanwhile, from the user's point of view, they can consult expert finance through a friendly UI, after answering a few simple questions to connect with expert according to financial needs for free.

The company also ensures that this user-entered information is only shared with expert match, so you don't have to worry about getting an offer Sales constantly.

"Financial services are an important foundation for living a stable life. However, there are still many people who have not been able to enjoy the benefits of financial services due to the low level of user literacy in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the digital transformation of financial companies has not improved so that the approach to new customers is not easy. efficient," concluded Matsuura.

Based on the results of monitoring its website, MoneyDuck provides credit card products, loans, savings, insurance, investments, and others together with related partners. Starting from J Trust Bank, Bank Mega, BNI, DBS Bank Indonesia, CTBTC Bank, Bank Danamon, BCA, BRI, Panin Bank, and many more. As for investment products, so far they have only presented products forex trading.

The development of similar businesses in Indonesia

The opportunity to become an aggregator of financial products is still wide because in Indonesia alone, the potential unbanked still higher than bankable. This aggregator solution is right for reaching those who have low financial literacy and have not been able to keep up with the fast changing market. On the regulatory side, the aggregator platform is currently still under the umbrella of Digital Financial Innovation at OJK.

Other issues that arise are the inability to choose and conduct personal research on financial products, causing problems due to choosing illegal products without realizing the consequences; users cannot access the desired financial products due to difficulties in filling out forms and incorrectly preparing the required documents; and there are still few sources of financial advice providers with friendly UX.

This condition also makes it difficult for financial institutions to switch to more efficient features such as AI chat bots or communication methods without a human touch due to user resistance. Users still need sales people and customer service personnel to offer and explain products, as well as guide them through the application process.

Both CekAja and Cermati, currently with their aggregator business bases that have been operating for a longer time, have transformed into various business units. fintech other. CekAja, for example, ventured into the credit scoring business to see how much loan and credit card applications were approved. Meanwhile, Cermati entered the realm insurtech with the brand Cermati Protect, p2p loans Indodana, and solutions Bank-as-a-service (BaaS).