East Ventures Leads Funding to a Financial Startup, Finantier

Venture capital firm East Ventures is leading pre-seed funding to open finance startup Finantier. The startup plans to expand to other countries in Southeast Asia, by offering region-specific solutions.

Based on the East Ventures Digital Competitiveness Index 2020, the biggest gap in the development of Indonesia’s digital economy is the financial inclusion category. This report shows that there are wide gaps between residents on Java and other islands in terms of access to financial services, the value of loans through financial technology (fintech), and digital payment transactions.

“Currently, hundreds of fintech companies have sprung up and offered their own solutions to increase financial inclusion. We believe that Finantier will help the company create more products and services for millions of Indonesians who don’t yet enjoy the benefits of financial access,” said East Ventures Co-founder and Managing Partner Willson Cuaca, quoted in a press release, Monday (23/11).

Apart from East Ventures, AC Ventures, Genesia Ventures and other investors participated in the investment. Meanwhile, Finantier is engaged in open finance, which allows fintech to collaborate safely with other financial institutions.

“Peer to peer lending fintech companies often find it difficult to channel loans to individuals and MSMEs. Usually, this is due to a lack of information or not being able to get a complete financial picture of the prospective borrower. In fact, this data is needed to reduce loan risk and reduce costs,” said COO Finantier Edwin Kusuma.

Just Established in the Middle of This Year

Finantier was also founded by Keng Low and Diego Rojas in the middle of this year. Rojas is a former CTO of several startups in Singapore and other countries. He is also experienced as a software engineer for decades for corporations in the United States (US), China and Southeast Asia.

Low is also a software engineer, who has worked in Silicon Valley. Prior to joining Finantier, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence at East Ventures. Meanwhile, Edwin worked at Google and held chief-level positions at several Indonesian fintech companies.

Finantier itself is a company that offers an application programming interface (API) and infrastructure to support the development of various fintech products. The service is claimed to be able to accelerate time-to-market and cut costs of developing tailored solutions.

“We are leveraging the digital footprints of consumers and businesses to provide them with secure access to customized financial services. This then helps improve the financial welfare of consumers in Southeast Asia,” said CPO Finantier Keng Low.

Finantier operates in Singapore and Indonesia. They plan to use this investment fund to recruit team members and accelerate technology development. This is because they want to expand to other countries in Southeast Asia.

Can Process Bank Data, Fintech and Multifinance for E-KYC

The Open Finance Finantier startup strives to help financial service institutions, especially those that are still conventional and want to transform into a digital land, for data processing, credit scoring, and electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC) infrastructure.

In a special interview with Bisnis, Finantier CEO Diego Rojas explained that the Application Programming Interface (API) and its open finance infrastructure will help financial institutions reduce the cost of developing digital business.

Finantier will operate with the principles of open banking that give consumers the freedom to access their data safely in using it optimally for various platforms.

This ecosystem will clearly help banking, multi-finance, insurance, cooperative, insurance, pension fund, and various types of fintech companies accelerate time-to-market and cut costs in developing tailored or tailored digital solutions.

Edwin Kusuma, COO of Finantier who is experienced in managing fintech peer-to-peer (P2P) lending companies, explained that this service is important because the Open Finance ecosystem is important because usually, the raw data collected by each type of institution is different.