JUMO, a technology company building next-generation financial services for emerging market entrepreneurs, has announced that they have extended more than US$2.5 billion in loans in their six markets in Africa and Asia.
The company says they reached this milestone in just over 18 months after crossing the US$1billion mark in 2019. This indicates exponential growth in the access to and availability of working capital for customers. Jumo also notes that they only have an average customer default rate of less than 5%.
This achievement is evidence of the success of JUMO’s unique business model, its ability to reach unbanked populations and to provide market-leading infrastructure for financial services, JUMO founder and CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball said.
“The thing that makes me most proud of this milestone is not the amount in dollars, it’s the millions of customers that we have served. Behind each dollar is a human story of someone who has put that capital to work to grow their business. These people are the backbone of their families, their communities, and the lifeblood of emerging market economies,” said Watkins-Ball.
JUMO partners with funders, banks and telecommunications companies to power a new generation of financial tools. The company was founded in London in 2015 and uses mobile wallet technology with data-driven credit prediction models to provide digital financial services infrastructure to partners, and products at scale to customers in emerging markets.
Watkins-Ball noted that over 76% of the 1.7billion people in the world who lack access to finance are in Africa, while over 32% of adults in South Asia are unbanked. JUMO uses its technology across multiple partnerships to address the challenge of helping entrepreneurs in these segments, he said.
“When we founded JUMO, we were always clear that we can only achieve our mission by leveraging sophisticated information technologies at really low cost,” said Watkins-Ball. “The increase in our prediction capability decreases the cost of credit risk, allowing us to share more value with customers while driving sustainable returns for our bank partners.”
JUMO is active in Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and Pakistan and has plans to launch in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria in the coming months.
“We’re optimistic about the possibilities in these markets and continue to see huge growth opportunities in Africa, with the potential to replicate our successes in other markets over the longer term,” Watkins-Ball concluded.
