Online lenders Moni has announced a new range of business loans that will enable market traders, spare part dealers, textile traders, and other small business owners in Africa to take advantage of the power of their communities to access the working capital they need to run and scale their businesses.
Moni is a digital platform that utilizes social trust and collective responsibility to provide financial services in Africa.
Starting with Nigeria, small business owners with a good social reputation simply need to join a lending cluster with an invite from an existing Moni user and once eligibility has been confirmed, they can access financing in 5 minutes or less.
To address this, Moni has developed a risk engine that combines financial data and business performance with social intelligence to facilitate more effective credit decisions for African SMEs.
Once the loan is disbursed, the cluster shares responsibility for the loan, and members can access funds from an automated savings pot to support other members if needed.
In 2022 alone, Moni reports it disbursed over $22 million in loans to more than 11,000 SMEs with a 99% repayment rate.
Moni is now expanding its community-powered model to provide financial services to a broader range of African SMEs.
According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), SMEs make up more than 90% of businesses and almost 80% of employment in Africa, yet traditional financial institutions’ ineffective credit decision-making has resulted in a $421 billion credit gap, leaving business owners unable to access working capital.
Quotes
According to Femi Iromini, CEO and co-founder of Moni, “Our community-powered business loans product is just one of the ways we are innovating around our unique context in Africa to make the most of what is already in place to deliver the financial services business owners need to create long-lasting wealth for themselves and their communities. We have ample evidence to show that this approach works and we are excited to be bringing more businesses on board to drive the economic development we all want to see on the continent.”
