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Bismart is a Kenya-based insurance aggregator, allowing its users to compare and buy various insurance products from multiple companies. The business was started in 2017. Founder Eunice Maina answers our questions.1. Give us your elevator pitch.Bismart is an online insurance marketplace where insurance firms list their products and customers are able to compare the policies. We recently introduced a feature that allows our users to compare policies based on other customers’ reviews – similar to what hotel booking platforms offer. We bring much-needed transparency to the insurance industry, which increases insurance literacy and awareness, especially for the youth. The insurance companies pay us a commission for every customer who buys through the Bismart platform.

Kiva is a non-profit lending platform well known for its microloan service targeted underserved markets globally. Lendio states that the program has now provided over $500,000 in microloans to business owners worldwide, 98% of whom are female. Lendio first launched the program in 2016. The company describes the program as part of its commitment to entrepreneurship and inclusivity. Lendio provides a microloan to a low-income entrepreneur for every new loan facilitated on its marketplace platform. This voluntary employee-contributed, employer-matched program reports a 94% participation rate among Lendio employees.

Sopra Banking Software launches its Marketplace and consolidates its open FinTech ecosystem strategy

Engagement Drivers in a Lending Marketplace: The Case for Kiva

First investmentsFoundation Ventures has already made four investments – only one of which has been announced publicly. It led or co-led all the four rounds it invested in. The investments include:Capiter: A B2B ecommerce marketplace co-founded and led by Swvl’s co-founder and former COO Mahmoud Nouh. The startup had started with a lending product, offering cash flow solutions to small retailers but has recently expanded its offering to launch a B2B marketplace as well for grocery stores in Egypt. Foundation Ventures led Capiter’s recently closed investment round.

So far JUMO has analysed more than 33 terabytes of data to serve more than nine million customers in seven countries across Africa and Asia, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Zambia and Pakistan.

Its mission is to build and operate inclusive digital banking marketplaces to advance financial inclusion for the 80 per cent of the world’s population who are excluded or underserved by traditional financial services.

As an investor partner, LeapFrog’s financial services expertise is being used for product design and multi-country rollouts, to turbocharge Jumo’s growth and spur financial inclusion across Africa.

Capiter is a B2B marketplace that brings together FMCGs, wholesalers, and merchants on one platform, enabling merchants to order their products through an eCommerce checkout and receive credit on their purchases. Currently, it is serving over 30.000 merchants and 150+ FMCGs and wholesalers with a team of close to 100 people.

We’re here to give you the best home buying experience through convenience, transparency and choice…while you make the most important purchase of your life- buying your home.

Once in East Africa, Flannery and Jackley agreed that they too would facilitate loans rather than donations. After weeks of brainstorming, they soon settled on the basic idea for Kiva. At first, they envisioned a few friends and family members lending money to a handful of entrepreneurs in East Africa. And then eventually, although they weren’t sure of the steps along the way, they saw Kiva evolving into a self-regulating online lending marketplace where microfinance institutions (MFIs) could raise loan capital to fund projects for small-business people in developing countries.

Kiva’s business plan was quite straightforward: An online platform would allow ordinary people to invest in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the developing world.

WorldRemit is just one of many different money transfer services that have become increasingly popular, especially since coronavirus has taken hold. Money transfer services are perfect for moving funds around, and thanks to quite a lot of competition they're now a relatively cheap and easy way of getting the job done. WorldRemit was set up in 2010, is headquartered in London and sits in the same marketplace as the likes of Azimo, Transferwise, CurrencyFair, Lebara Money Transfer, PayPal, Zelle and other competitors.

“The lack of an access to a structured market results in smallholder farmers being forced to sell to middlemen who buy at ridiculously exploitative prices,” writes the team at AgroCenta, a mobile marketplace for Ghanaian farmers, on its website. Ghanaian farmers don’t have access to buyers in faraway cities, or access to truckers who can transport their goods to a central market. The middlemen provide a service, but it hardly benefits the farmers at all. The middlemen have all the power, and with a largely illiterate population of farmers, all the leverage. AgroCenta, founded by two former employees of Esoko, a financial assistance app, is a sort of Swiss Army knife of tools to help address those issues. It’s not cutting out the middlemen, not yet, but it places some more power in the hands of farmers, with the goal of increasing that power. Within that knife are four platforms: AgroTrade, AgroPay, Truckr, and AgroInfo.

Across the globe, smallholder farmers lose between $50 billion and $100 billion annually, often from natural disasters, but reportedly only 1% is insured from these accidents. As an example, in Feburary 2019, the company made several payouts to farmers in Kenya as poor rainfall caused large amount of crop failure.

Jason Schapiro, WorldCover Lead Engineer, said “Our algorithms are specifically calibrated to rainfall events by region and crop type, automatically triggering instant payouts to insured farmers through mobile money services like M-Pesa.”

Types of Loans Available Through Peer-to-Peer Lending P2P loans can be used for many of the same purposes as personal loans. Here are a few of the loan types you may find on popular P2P websites.  Personal LoansHome Improvement LoansAuto LoansStudent LoansMedical LoansBusiness Loans

Founded in 2015, Agrocenta operates a mobile merchanting platform that provides market information, storage and delivery solutions to smallholder farmers in Ghana. According to co-founders Francis Obirikorang and Michael Ocansey, their flagship app, CropChain which enables trade between smallholder farmers and consumers, has rapidly grown from 3,000 to 48,000 registered farmers. The startup also provides credit and insurance facilities for smallholder farmers via its LendIt app.

Despite the fact peer-to-peer lending has numerous benefits over the classic model, it also has certain potential drawbacks, such as lower level of security and personal guarantees as compared to bank loans. This is why only the most reputable P2P lending marketplaces with a positive track record are potentially able to boost the entire fintech industry.