Positive disruption. That captures the impact KiaKia, Nigeria’s hottest Fintech start-up is having in the country’s Fintech ecosystem. Since its establishment in 2016, KiaKia has facilitated, structured, originated and disbursed over N4.5 billion as personal and business loans to individuals and MSMEs across Nigeria, making it one of the most impactful MSME focused financial services firm in the country. Little wonder it was the recipient of IFINCA award (Inclusive Finance Nigeria Conference and Awards) for the best peer-to-peer lending platform in Nigeria, having successfully facilitated lending and investment of aggregated private capital in billions of naira on behalf of individuals and corporates without recording a single fund loss in four years.
To maintain its leading edge in innovations, KiaKia has launched the first lending investment mobile app in the country. According to the company, the Android-based mobile app is designed to enable any individual above 18 years of age with legitimate income to invest in the funding of secured personal and business loans originated, underwritten and booked by KiaKia across the country, and earn decent quarterly, bi-annual and yearly interest income.
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The App also offers Halal option which is the first in Nigeria at the SME level, with this; individuals can earn predetermined profit by funding businesses as a substitute for interest. An option created in response to growing demand from both businesses and funders who have preference for profit sharing rather than interest earnings. Individuals can lend out a minimum of N50,000 and a maximum of N2.5m for a minimum of 6 months and maximum of 18months as against the previous supposed, financially discriminatory minimum threshold of N1,000,000. KiaKia does not operate a deposit, payment nor wallet system, the firm says.
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Prior to its peer-to-peer (P2P) launch, the lending investment had been privately exclusive to high income individuals in the last three years, Chiemeziem Anyadike, chief operating officer (COO), says. This has enabled these lenders to earn decent interest income on funds which KiaKia disburses to MSMEs as secured and unsecured loans across multiple sectors. He added that the company decided to open up the P2P channel to the public by creating an app that enables any individual with legitimate source of funds/income to securely lend it out to carefully preselected and preapproved borrowers on the KiaKia platform with clearly indicated and predetermined interest rates. Interest rates range between 10 to 40 percent depending on the package and tenure subscribed to.
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Funds go directly to prequalified and pre-approved borrowers on the KiaKia platform. The P2P lending platform has provided access to critically needed working capital to players in Nigeria’s real sector in the face of limited access to credit, a funding gap the Central Bank governor puts at about $158 billion, Anyadike states. Speaking further, the Co-founder/CEO stated that a peer-to-peer lending and investment platform like KiaKia is optimised to deliver value.“We offer the opportunity to put your money to work, by efficiently aggregating funds, carefully matching and securely disbursing them to credit-worthy borrowers, allowing lenders and funders to directly enjoy interests and profit sharing,” Anyadike further says adding that “traditional financial institutions alone cannot meet the credit needs of economically active individuals and the real sector.”
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KiaKia is poised to extend its reach across the length and breadth of the country as part of efforts to ensure that many of those facing funding challenges in starting up businesses would be reached.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry
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