A $5 trillion funding gap for MSMEs
Capital is available but MSMEs lack access. Kuelap is closing the gap.
There is global capital available to close the funding gap, but it is unable to reach the MSMEs. The IFC MSME Finance Gap puts the gap between the supply of available funding and the unmet demand at $5 trillion.
Banks cannot solve this. “MSMEs remain a largely underbanked segment in most markets” — Bain
“SMEs are costlier to serve than large merchants are— lower loan sizes mean higher unit transaction costs. They also typically come with higher risk—and the higher costs that entails … and this makes it less acceptable for a financial institution to service them.” – Bain
Financial cooperatives:
The untapped channel
Financial cooperatives, not banks, are the channel to millions of MSME borrowers.
Kuelap’s lending partners are eager to lend to coops that use Kuelap’s cooperative management system.
Coops are government-regulated institutions that provide loans to their members, and those members are micro-merchants, farmers, and producers. Coops are the trusted channel for hundreds of millions of MSME borrowers. They are locally focused, relationship driven, and branch-based.
Micro businesses are not comfortable with traditional lending products from banks. They need a financial institution that is locally embedded and which can gain their trust – World Economic Forum, May 2022
With our solution, built for the coop channel, MSMEs get access to capital. Coops get loan revenue and stronger relationships with their members. And lenders get a 100% digital path to borrowers.
Our embedded solution for borrowers, cooperatives, and lenders
Kuelap’s app captures all the data needed for low-cost, low-risk embedded lending.
Our solution serves all three links in the path to the MSME – a coop app to capture data, loan management software to process loans, and a portfolio management system for funders.
With lending embedded inside Kuelap’s app, the risk is lower because the app has rich borrower data and history, and costs are lower because the borrower is already known.
Our app captures all the data for embedded lending, because coops use it to manage and operate all aspects of their business, including:
- Members
- Deposits
- Loans
- Accounting & Financial reporting
For coops, our loan management solution covers the full lifecycle of lending:
- Origination
- Processing
- Underwriting
- Servicing
For lenders, our portfolio management system provides control and visibility. It includes dashboards, reports, and BI & data analytics for:
- Portfolio performance
- Regulatory compliance
- Social impact measurement
In his daily life, this is great progress
51 million MSMEs in Indonesia lack access to affordable credit.
Somewhere in the city, in the early hours of the morning, a micro merchant wakes up and pulls out his mobile phone. He’s taking out a small loan to buy inventory at the local market. He doesn’t have a relationship with a bank. Instead, he’s getting embedded lending directly from his coop.
During the day, he will sell the inventory. At the end of the day, he will repay the loan and put his earnings in a savings account at his coop. He’ll be building his business and credit history and growing his business.
The Kuelap team
Globally experienced; locally present.
The Kuleap team is uniquely positioned to deliver embedded lending solutions to financial cooperatives.
We are globally connected with a local presence. We have fifteen years of experience in financial systems for coops, and deep architectural expertise in low-cost, massively scalable, high security, high-reliability cloud native systems.
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Craig Chelius, CEO
Craig CheliusCEOSeattleCraig is a co-founder of Kuelap. He has guided Kuelap through the early days of conceiving and building its coop management system; the go-to-market validation in the midst of the pandemic; and the launch of its embedded lending solution in 2022.
Craig has passionately pursued the vision of digital financial services for the underbanked, first at the Grameen Foundation, then as co-founder of the Mifos Initiative, and now as part of the Kuelap team.
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Hanung P Semiartedy, CRO
Hanung P SemiartedyCROJakartaChief Revenue Officer with 20 years+ experience orchestrating customer experiences in Marketing, Sales, Product, Operations and Customer Service in emerging technologies by helping innovative companies to drive business results with proven success strategic positioning and deliver the best customer journey.
Previously worked at Privy.id, Via.com, British Oxygen Company (Linde Gas), Coca-Cola, Nestle, TRW Automotive and IBM
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Robert Elles, CTO
Robert EllesCTOBerlinChief Technology Officer - Kuelap.
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Jonathan Ncube, CPO
Jonathan NcubeCPONairobiChief Product Officer - Kuelap
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Will Schober, Executive VP
Will SchoberExecutive VPSeattleWith a background in finance, Will is driving sales, marketing, and go-to-market efforts around the globe.
He is passionate about innovations in financial services, and working to secure a place for Kuelap at the forefront of modern financial technology.
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Luisa Martinez, VP Social Impact
Luisa MartinezVP Social ImpactMontevideoUruguayan breed, yet constantly on the move, Luisa is highly involved in social inclusion. Her main goal is to advocate for financial inclusion -a key enabler to reducing poverty and boosting prosperity- through her position as Vice-president of Social Impact.Besides her position at Kuelap, she's highly involved in other projects, such as the "Salimos codo a codo" an initiative to help and develop micro-entrepreneurs surf the pandemic impact. Since 2015 she has also been a speaker at multiple global and regional conferences within the World Economic Forum, Academia, Central Banks, and Tech conferences. Lastly, in 2017 she was awarded Peace Ambassador recognition by the European Commission for One Young World and a Youth Leader by the World Bank.
Contact Us
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