Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) form the core of Singapore’s economy, accounting for 99% of all companies and 72% of all employment in 2018.
However, data shows that SMEs are still suffering from a lack of financing options, with just about half of SMEs with a credit history of less than three years having access to bank loans.
Lendingpot.sg was established in 2017 in order to address this problem and make it easy for SMEs to obtain the right business financing solutions by creating a digital marketplace connecting SMEs and financiers in Singapore for free.
We are happy to share the data collected by our business loan platform in 2019. This report focuses on five areas:
While we would like to stress that the findings presented in this report are not meant to be definitive, it is our hope that they will provide insights into a segment of the SME financing ecosystem in Singapore.
The typical SME profile that we served in 2019 is a Singapore-based company between one to three years old in the service industry, generating between $100,000 and $500,000 in revenue and up to $50,000 in profit. The most common financing purpose is to bridge working capital gaps.
While more than 80% of the applicants on Lendingpot in 2019 are profitable, we are pleased to share that we helped more than a quarter of loss-making applicants secure much-needed financing. This is a result of the wide range of product types and risk appetites available within our network of financiers.
Some of our unprofitable applicants are fast-growing companies but were previously overlooked because they do not fit into the traditional credit profile. For example, one of the SMEs that managed to secure financing through Lendingpot was growing revenue at almost 300% despite being loss-making.
One of the key benefits that Lendingpot brings to SMEs is productivity – enabling them to reach multiple financial institutions through a single request. This saves the SME owner the time and effort needed to schedule individual appointments, prepare duplicate sets of documentation, and repeat the request over and over again.
Each qualified request made on Lendingpot typically attracts about 10 responses from interested financial institutions. The fastest application-to-disbursement in 2019 took just 2 days! But most of the time, cases get assessed, approved and funded within 3 weeks from application on Lendingpot.
Please download our report below for the detailed breakdown of our data.
Lendingpot.sg operates a Business Loan Marketplace that allows an SME to connect to multiple lenders with just one application, allowing the SME to know who its prospective lenders are and the rates that they offer, in a very short time.
Bernice takes pleasure in building quality relationships with people. She also enjoys R&B music, games and creating content.
