Singapore, 22 July 2020 – Funding Societies, Southeast Asia’s largest SME digital financing platform, was named the winner of a Silver Stevie® Award last week in the Innovation in Technology category in the seventh annual Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards. Funding Societies is the only fintech company in Southeast Asia to win a Stevie this year after receiving high scores on FS Bolt, its mobile SME loan application product. Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 100 executives around the world acting as judges in May and June.

The Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards are the only business awards program to recognise innovation in the workplace in all 29 nations of the Asia-Pacific region. The Stevie Awards are widely considered to be the world’s premier business awards, conferring recognition for achievement in programs such as The International Business Awards® for 18 years.

Funding Societies has presence in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and in the last 5 years since its inception, the company has disbursed over S$1.5b across more than 2.5 million business loans regionally. These loans are primarily funded by individual and institutional investors starting as low as S$20 per investment.

Funding Societies aims to lower the barrier of access to working capital for deserving but under-served small SMEs. To that end, FS Bolt not only makes it simple to apply for loans, Funding Societies’ automated credit assessment algorithm reduces the approval decision time of FS Bolt loans to two hours, which means loans can be disbursed within the same day. The speed of application and disbursal makes it a viable product even for medium sized SMEs who are looking for some urgent funds. There are also no early repayment fees, making it easier for SMEs to pay off the debt early when they have excess cash. The product has seen a phenomenal adoption rate in Singapore and Malaysia since its release in 2017. In the last few years, about 2,000 loans have been disbursed amounting to over S$50m.

Small businesses traditionally face more rejection than their larger and more established peers when applying for working capital loans because they fail to meet the bureaucratic standards of traditional financial institutions. For this reason, 51% of Southeast Asia’s SMEs although filled with economic potential have been denied affordable credit, if at all. Furthermore, for small business owners bogged down by a multitude of operations needs and have little time to spare, queuing up at the bank with multiple financial statements in hand is an extremely exhaustive process. Needless to say, these obstacles in attempting to access credit are made more apparent by the need to reduce organisational manpower and social activity in today’s weak COVID-19 climate.

FS Bolt was developed to allow small business owners to digitally apply for loans without any paperwork. These applications only require borrowers to submit four documents (including National Registration Identity Card), and can be completed in two minutes. Business owners will then receive real-time loan application updates on-the-go.

“To us, our focus is always to serve our SMEs better, responsibly and sustainably, while protecting and growing the wealth of our loan investors. Being recognised for our work by Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards is a great honour and encouragement to us,” says Co-founder and Group CEO of Funding Societies, Kelvin Teo.

More than 1,000 nominations from organisations across the Asia-Pacific region were considered this year in categories such as Award for Excellence in Innovation in Products & Services, Award for Innovative Management, and Award for Corporate Innovation, among many others.

Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word for “crowned,” the winners will be celebrated during a virtual (online) awards ceremony on Tuesday, 22 September.

“We are delighted that the seventh edition of the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards attracted so many impressive nominations,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Gallagher. “This year’s winning nominations are testament to the resiliency and innovation of organisations in the region, many of which continue to succeed despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we are disappointed that we cannot stage the in-person awards banquet we had planned for Hanoi, Vietnam this year, we look forward to celebrating many of this year’s winners during our virtual awards ceremony on 22 September.”

For the full list of 2020 winners, please visit https://asia.stevieawards.com/2020-stevie-winners.

About Funding Societies
Funding Societies | Modalku is the largest SME digital financing platform in Southeast Asia. It is licensed in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, and backed by Sequoia India and Softbank Ventures Asia Corp amongst many others. It provides business financing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is funded by individual and institutional investors. In 5 years, it has helped finance over 2.4 million business loans with over S$1.5 billion in funding. It was given the MAS FinTech Award in 2016, the Global SME Excellence Award at the United Nations’ ITU Telecom World in 2017, Brands for Good in 2019, and recognised by IDC as amongst the 5 fastest growing FinTechs in Singapore in 2020.

Read our company story here: https://blog.fundingsocieties.com/our-story/

About the Stevie® Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

Sponsors and partners of the 2020 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards include Adobo Magazine, BRComm, PR Newswire Asia, and the Korea Business Communicators Association.