CROWDCREDIT, a Japanese cross-border marketplace lending company which promises to fill in lending gaps by providing funds for lending and financial institutions including banks, is currently studying the market and possibility of business expansion in the Philippines.
Realizing the huge difference of the loan situations of Japan from the other countries, Tomoyuki Sugiyama founded Crowdcredit in 2013.
In other countries, such as the United Kingdom, for example, banks receive loan applications more than their existing deposit or more than the loans that they can cater to. The case is opposite with Japan’s banks with more excess deposits than loans. With this, the basic concept of Crowdcredit is to provide this excess fund for loan to other countries that would need them.
A group of investors in Japan, most of them just middle-class Japanese, invest a specific amount needed by a specific country through an online transaction which is easily accessible via Crowdcredit’s website. Making use of this crowd funding, the company then works with their partner professional firms around the globe for personal loans, non-performing loan, loan-to-balance sheet lenders, secured car loans, and trade finance. These are then cascaded to their individual and private company borrowers.
Crowdcredit has a vast network of global partners which includes Mfx, Kobranzas, Fellow Finance, Savy, Cream Finance, Ovamba, Bondora, Mogo, Mintos, and Prestiamoci.
In the event of currency gap, the company makes use of Mfx as a currency hedge to ease up the transaction should there be conversion and differences in the two countries’ currency.
As the Crowdcredit is not yet in Southeast Asia, CEO Tomoyuki Sugiyama said they had been interested in expanding to the Philippines as they have seen its potentially growing market.
When asked how they wish to penetrate the country’s lending and borrowing market, investment department manager Makoto Ujike said they had been hearing how cooperatives had been a big factor in the local industry and they plan to meet with the known and established cooperatives in the country.
“We are thinking of fully going into the Philippines possibly January to March of 2018 through financial institutions in the Philippines like rural banks,” said Sugiyama, adding they have yet to talk with cooperatives but they had been planning to.
During the three-day Davao Agri Trade Expo 2017, Ujike said they had been talking with representatives of the different banks in the country that were also present during the exhibit and they wish to be able to come up with a good financial partnership in the Philippines.
Currently, about 58.4 percent of those who avail of Crowdcredit’s service are from Europe followed by South America with 23.3 percent, and then Africa with 18.3 percent.