Aluna Partners Group Launches up to $20 Million Asset-Backed Lending Facility for Latin American Gig Economy Fintech
Introduction of Transaction:
Aluna Partners, a global investment banking firm with expertise in arranging alternative credit, announced that it has reached an agreement with a Consumer Lender Fintech to finance an asset-based lending facility for up to $10 million. The transaction will allow the company to originate new consumer loans for women entrepreneurs in Colombia, via three main products: Point of Sale, salary advance, and direct loans.
About the company:
The borrower is one of Colombia’s fastest growing fintechs, that aims to increase financial inclusion through 100% digital credit solutions for women, gig workers, entrepreneurs and students. It develops special scorecards for women customers, who are given better terms (lower cost of instalments than men) due to the historical performance of women NPL being 200bps lower than those of men.
The borrower has disbursed more than $13M USD over 28,000 loans since 2019, over 60% of which are to women, using state-of-the-art technology including AI, proprietary algorithms, and biometric verification to allow underbanked groups to apply for a loan in just ten minutes. We are working to close the financial inclusion gap and offer ourcustomers the opportunity to improve their quality of life through our loans. The borrower, has adopted an intentional approach to designing digital credit solutions for women customers to address gender disparities in financial inclusion. It has collected sex disaggregated data (SDD), identified a business case for serving women, and customised its products for well-performing sub-segments. It aims to create customised credit solutions that address women’s unique needs across different economic segments.
Messages from Parties:
“Aluna Partners is pleased to partner with the borrower by supporting its 3-year expansion strategy. The company’s gender equality mission aligns with our objective of improving financial services penetration in Latin America,” said Victor Rivera, Managing Director, at Aluna Partners.
“We are proud to partner with the borrower, as its origination track record and underwriting policies showed strong resilience during 2022 and 2023, one of the most challenging and volatile interest rate periods we have experienced over 20 years”. said Victor Rivera, Managing Director, at Aluna Partners.
“Finding the right partners to continue our mission of bringing inclusive finance to the markets we address is our priority, we are very happy to include Aluna as one of our strategic relationships going forward”, added the borrower’s CEO.
Aluna Partners is an experienced investment banking advisor and arranger in the technology sector with over $100 million worth of debt transactions. The firm has supported over several technology scale-ups since 2021, operating across 12 countries in the Americas, Europe and MENA. Aluna Partners arranges debt, equity and M&A transactions for technology companies.
