April 25, 2024

• 

South Korea’s fintech startup Finda has received a combined 4.5 billion won ($3.8 million) series A funding from multiple investors to enhance its newest paperless loan platform powered by big data, the startup said on July 22.

Joining the round include venture capital houses Intervest, Mega Investment and Strong Ventures, as well as commercial lender Woori Bank and business information provider Coocon.

“Finda’s new service is expected to give practical advantage to end-users,” said Lim Hyung-ju, partner of Mega Investment.

Launched in July, Finda’s loan platform allows users of the mobile app to know the maximum amount of loans they are entitled to and the lowest loan interest possible within a few seconds, before applying. The app will help the user take out loans according to the condition.

The service overcame a regulatory hurdle as it gained approval for two-year regulatory sandbox in May. Under the regulations, users were restricted from comparing personal loan information of multiple lenders, without submitting paperwork to each of them. Hence, Korean borrowers had to go through a cumbersome process of visiting each financial institution to submit documents.

The financial authorities seek to revise the rule in the second half of this year.

“We will continue to enhance our service to have none of financial customers lose out of financial information they can fully take advantage of,” Finda CEO Lee Hye-min said in a statement.

The paperless loan platform is an addition to Finda’s web portal that provides information about some 17,000 financial products, by teaming up with some 50 institutions. In 2016, Finda had received a combined 1.2 billion won from investors including D.Camp, 500 Startups, FuturePlay and Strong Ventures.

By Son Ji-hyoung (consnow@heraldcorp.com)