Lidya Global Limited: Fintech lender shifts to inclusive credit enabler.
Lidya Global Limited (“Lidya”) is a Nigeria-based Financial Technology Company (“FinTech”) traditionally focused on the provision of working capital to small and medium-sized enterprises (‘SMEs’). The company now provides secure and flexible credit infrastructure so lenders can acquire customers, originate loans and collect repayments with confidence.
Credit evaluation and scoring is done through the assessment of transaction data processed through an in-house proprietary algorithm. Lidya’s platform enables SMEs to create account profiles, build credit records, and access credit to grow their businesses. The leading fintech lender is incorporating credit enabling in its business model, allowing other inclusive financial institutions to tap into its infrastructure to acquire customers and originate, manage, and collect loans.
Lidya, through the Lidya platform, has been able to disburse approximately USD 100 million in credit across over 32 500 loans since inception. ‘Lidya Collect’, a loan repayments collection tool embedded in the Lidya platform, together with the company’s proprietary scoring algorithms, and portfolio strategy & analytics, has been able to churn out a high-quality book with a repayment rate of approximately 99%. The company has built sufficient capacity on the Lidya platform to accommodate many entities, with a current count of over 220 000 registered businesses. Lidya operates in Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa with an SME funding gap of more than USD 300 billion.
Lidya’s shift in strategic intent, from a credit-granting-only business to an inclusive credit enabler is mainly necessitated by the company’s drive to unlock credit for Africans and to facilitate economic growth. Through this strategy, credit can be unlocked faster by aggregating lenders into one secure, stable infrastructure that accelerates credit by revealing true customer indebtedness and solving collections. Lidya has built an engine for credit in Africa by solving customer acquisition, establishing optimal credit collections and setting up an efficient capital market where any financial institution can be a lender and all credible customers can access credit. The platform presents a prudential risk management tool against which banks, fintech, and microfinance institutions can scale up operations without compromising on asset quality. Through the Lidya platform, financial institutions get access to a wider array of potential borrowers to whom credit can be granted with a shorter turnaround time and excellent after-sales service. To date, Lidya has onboarded several blue-chip financial partners onto its credit infrastructure product.
Verdant Capital is the sole advisor to Lidya Global Limited on their fundraising efforts.
Sources: Lidya, Business Insider Africa