Lendable is today announcing that it has invested over US$100 million in credit, to help fintech companies in emerging and frontier markets to scale. It 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’s 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.
Daniel Goldfarb, Co-Founder and CEO, Lendable, says, “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.”
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.
As an example of the work Lendable is increasingly focused on, Lendable recently signed and began disbursement on a facility to Amartha, who lends to women-owned MSMEs in Indonesia. This transaction helps small businesses increase revenues as the economy looks to recover from COVID and at the same time addresses the issue of gender equity in financial services.
To further increase the number of female end-borrowers, Lendable 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.
Anna Koshy, Lendable IC member and Head of Legal says, “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 a 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.”
Serge LeVert-Chiasson, managing director of impact at Sarona Asset Management, shared: “We are 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 analysis. This will enhance its capabilities to make impactful decisions, design more impactful products and increase industry learnings.
