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A large proportion of JUMO’s current customers earn very low incomes (80% of the company’s Tanzanian customers live on less than 4 dollars a day). Many are accessing financial products for the first time thanks to the company, for example, 81% of the company’s Tanzanian and 77% of Zambian customers say they have never taken out a formal loan before.
Mobile-phone-enabled financial services go some way to helping meet the shortage of traditional banking solutions, which are often expensive and unsuited to the needs of a large proportion of people in emerging markets. Proparco is deploying its investment of US$ 3 million as a way to partner in JUMO’s development and to help grow the mobile loan sector in support of low-income populations, especially informal micro entreprenuers who are frequently shut out of the formal banking system.
“We have proven our business model and are now gearing up for the next phase of building the largest scale and lowest cost platform delivering high-quality financial services to emerging markets,” said Andrew Watkins-Ball, founder and CEO of JUMO. “With Proparco we have an investor who understands the complexity of our markets and is committed to the qualitative imperatives of our mission such as customer protection and transparency so we are very excited about this partnership.“
