About your institution
We enable financial service providers to lend to SMEs by providing lending technology, credit analytics and/or funding structures to bridge technology gaps and mitigate risk. We promote financial inclusion by ensuring loans can be offered to small businesses that are affordable for borrowers and attractive for lenders. We have been active in Indonesia for the last two years, working closely with a leading local bank and the rest of the financial ecosystem. Our team is roughly 50% technology and 25% credit analytics representing our commitment to bring solutions based on technology.
About your program
Nikel develops dedicated lending programs with financial service providers that focus on various impact themes, such as healthcare, gender equity, food security and climate change. We also apply gender lens investing (GLI) as a strategy across all our programs. This means we work with financial service providers that have a diverse leadership team/workforce and/or promote products that benefit the needs of women and girls. Two examples of our impact-themed lending programs are:
1. The Indonesian Resilience Fund, a US$40 million fund that provides credit to SMEs within the healthcare and essential goods sector. Through this fund, we have originated healthcare financing opportunities with our local lending partners and brought down the cost of capital through blended finance structures supported by development finance institutions. The GLI framework for this fund means we focus on healthcare opportunities that benefit the needs of women e.g. financing ultrasound equipment for maternal care by hospitals and midwives.
2. Nikel Academy is an outreach and training program (as a service) for banks and technology companies to become women-led SMEs (“W-SMEs”) financial institution and service provider of choice. The program offers a range of non-financial services such as networking opportunities, information-sharing, networking opportunities, financial and business trainings with the goal to address specific W-SME barriers to entrepreneurial growth in Indonesia.