Lendable has announced that it has invested over US$100 million in credit to help fintech startups in emerging and frontier markets to scale.
The debt finance provider has also become a 2X Challenge eligible company, as part of its commitment to becoming the best in class on gender equity and gender lens investing.
Lendable says its mission is to increase fair access to financial products and services, with a focus on fintech solutions. Starting in 2015, it began lending to fintech companies to help them scale and it has now reached over one million end-borrowers.
“The expanding range of services from our fintech investees is helping build wealth and productivity in different ways. Since early 2020 we started looking at how we could do better around both gender equity at Lendable and in our portfolio. Becoming 2X compliant is part of our commitment to furthering gender equity in impact investing, directing more capital towards women, collecting data on women end-borrowers and monitoring the impact of investments with, and in, women.” Daniel Goldfarb, Co-Founder and CEO, Lendable, says/
Over 360,000 female end borrowers have already been financed by Lendable across SME, productive asset and solar home system loans. This makes up 29% of end-recipients.
To further increase the number of female end-borrowers, Lendable says it is launching a number of initiatives, including a project with MEDA, with technical assistance from Sarona Asset Management, to establish a gender lens for its data collection, investment process, and product design.
“We are constantly working with our investors and borrowers to improve our impact performance and measurement. We are excited to be developing an innovative impact scoring methodology that will include gender lens assessment. The work with MEDA and Sarona will help ensure that not only are our investments market-leading in financial inclusion and impact but that they will directly reach more women.” Anna Koshy, Lendable IC member and Head of Legal says.
Serge LeVert-Chiasson, managing director of impact at Sarona Asset Management says they’re excited to work with Lendable to deliver long-lasting societal change.
‘’For Sarona, it is an opportunity to work with a portfolio of high growth fintech companies supporting them in improving their capabilities in gender lens investing including the greater use of data to implement women’s empowerment strategies across their operations.”
Data is at the core of how Lendable underwrites and manages risk, using its proprietary technology and database. As part of its work in 2021, Lendable will further incorporate impact data, and specifically richer gender data, into its technology and analyes. This will enhance its capabilities to make impactful decisions, design more impactful products and increase industry learnings.
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