Kredivo closes up to US$20mil credit line to fuel Indonesian expansion

• Kredivo will use funds to diversify loan book, currently predominantly domestically originated
• Kredivo’s transaction value and loan book have been growing at 40% and 35% per quarter

JAKARTA-headquartered Kredivo, the leading digital credit platform for retail borrowers across Indonesia, and Partners for Growth V, LP (PFG), a leading venture debt firm in the US and Australia, announced on Sept 4 the closing of a debt line of up to US$20 million (RM84.3 million) to fund loans for Kredivo’s borrowers in Indonesia.

The deal marks a major milestone for both firms: for Kredivo, it is the largest deal in its history with an offshore (international) lender; for PFG, this represents one of their largest deals in Asia Pacific (APAC) and their first in Indonesia.

The closing of this deal will further propel the momentum that Kredivo has enjoyed in the past 18 months, where its transaction value and loan book have been growing at 40% and 35% per quarter, respectively.

In addition, Kredivo will use the funds to diversify its loan book, currently predominantly domestically originated. The partnership between the two firms is structured in the form of a credit line where Kredivo will be able to access up to US$20 million of debt, on-demand.

Commenting on the closure, Umang Rustagi, commissioner of Kredivo, said, “We are delighted to work with a fund of PFG’s caliber. While the credit line is going to give us fuel to accelerate our growth, what is especially satisfying to us is that we came out on the winning side of a very deep evaluation conducted by the PFG team. The credit line from PFG will be used to fund all the product lines that we have launched to date: e-commerce financing, personal loans and offline.”

Jason Georgatos, partner at PFG, said, “We are very excited to be partnering with Kredivo. We have invested in a unique company that matches our values of fair and sustainable financial inclusion. Kredivo is one of the lowest cost lenders in the market and has one of the best risk metrics that we have come across, yet it is also one of the fastest growing. We are very pleased to anchor our first investment in this region with a team and business of this caliber.”

Indonesia is one of the most credit-starved countries in Asia, with less than 3% of its population in possession of a credit card and less than 5% having access to unsecured credit from banks. The gap has led to the growth of the digital lending industry, which is filling the gap opened up by the lack of lending from banks from other traditional financial institutions.

While the industry is primarily fueled by peer-to-peer lending models, the deal between Kredivo and PFG represents a significant departure from the norm, and a sign of the growing institutional credibility of the sector.