Finclusion Group, an African-focused credit-led neobank company, has raised an additional equity financing of $2 million.
The company, which provide financial services to its users through AI algorithm and an array of credit-centric products, had raised $20 million equity and debt financing in January, 2022, with this $2 million being supplemental to that.
The newly raised funding was led by Leonard Stiegeler. Stiegeler will also be joining the board of the company along with Sudeep Ramnani, and Jai Mahtani.
According to the company, the funding would be used to add new, fully integrated territories to its business. Finclusion will also use the funds to develop new offerings, specifically in third-party support of microfinance banks wanting to offer more financial services.
Finclusion was founded by Timothy Nuy in 2019. The company has its headquarters in Mauritius, and have operational presence in a number of African countries including Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini and Kenya.
Finclusion offer a suite of services which includes its wage streaming product. With this product, Finclusion provides payroll loans and future wage loans where employees can take loans off the back of their salary, deduct them from their payroll and lend through employer relationships. It also offer a product it calls SmartAdvance, where the company partners with employers to offers solutions that improve employees’ financial well-being.
Finclusion claims it has other products in the pipeline, like insurance product and savings products, cards and “buy now, pay later” offerings.
Finclusion has also gone through some stages of rebranding which the company hopes will help it better compete with the big players in the business. The rebranding has resulted in a number of its franchise across Africa getting renamed. Some of the products that got rebranded include: Fin Kenya, which was formerly known as TrustGro; Fin Tanzania was renamed from Fikia Finance; and Fin South Africa – with its products now being SmartAdvance by Fin, NiftyCredit by Fin, NiftyCover by Fin, MediFin and e-Fin.
“Our cross-selling experience was limited when we first launched, so effectively through this integration, everything becomes Fin. Someone will log into his Fin South Africa platform, and effectively get access to all the financial services we offer in that country that they need, which makes it easier to drive repeat engagement and to ensure that customers have full visibility of our offering, but also the financial products they have outstanding,” co-CEO Timothy Nuy said.