Afluenta, headquarted in Buenos Aires, announced today the completion of its Series B funding round from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector institution of the World Bank Group, and Elevar Equity, a venture capital firm. IFC and Elevar Equity are investing 4 million US$ each.
Afluenta seeks to disrupt the traditional financial services industry, cutting out middlemen and using proprietary technology to transform the process of applying for a loan, thus facilitating access to financing. Afluenta says it offers borrowers a simple, affordable and less bureaucratic experience, while delivering better yield for individual and institutional lenders.
A pioneer in the region, Afluenta plans to use the proceeds of the Series B financing for accelerating its network expansion plan across Latin America. Launched in Argentina in 2012 and in Peru in 2015, Afluenta plans to launch new services in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil in the next 12 months to consolidate as the first pan-regional player of this new and disruptive alternative financing. Continue reading →
Afluenta is a leading marketplace lending company in Latin America (LatAm) who connects creditworthy borrowers with investors, to create more convenient loans and better investment opportunities. Our advanced technology provides an innovative investment alternative for individuals and institutions lenders interested in getting better yields through investing in consumer loans without the traditional middleman.
What are the three main advantages for investors?
There are not many alternatives for investors across LatAm emerging markets. We believe that Afluenta is a truly new alternative with a potential high net yield and low volatility but being specific Afluenta provides:
Better yields compared with traditional banking products since Afluenta removes banks, as intermediary, and allows to distribute the traditional banking spread between borrowers and lenders.
It’s simple, secure and easy to understand and operate.
There are many features on the platform to facilitate the use and trading fractional loans such as the Secondary Market which allow lenders to have liquidity.
What are the three main advantages for borrowers?
Although, compared with investment alternatives, there are plenty of choices to get a loan in our region, those alternatives are not cheaper, convenient or hassle free for borrowers so we designed a better loan processes and conditions to provide:
Access to cheaper loans than those they can get in the traditional financial institutions
Get loans faster. Applicants get a response about the loan admission in 20 seconds and the loan is funded in approximately 3 days so they get the money much faster.
The entire process is hassle free. Potential borrowers just complete a short application and not are requested to provide physical information. 100% of the process is online.
What ROI can investors expect?
The net yield that investors can expect is, swapped in US dollars, an average of 21.5%. The loans are provided in local currency and always will be in local currencies no matter the country we will be operating in.
How did you start Afluenta? Is the company funded with venture capital?
Afluenta was born in 2010 but for many years I had it in mind since I had a great experience in financial services obtained running American Express in LatAm as well as in Santander in Argentina and worked in Tech industry also in LatAm. In 2011 we fund raised from an angel investor to develop our technological development and then we got the approval from the Argentinean National Securities Commission to launch our operation initially in Argentina in September 2012. Since then we have grown to a large number of loans people to people
Afluenta was initially funded with my savings, then we got two fund raising rounds, Angel one and Series A (both of them Argentinean investors). We are about to close our Series B with US VCs and international institutional investors to support the regional expansion process.
What were the main milestones since your launch in 2012?
We set the rules for this industry in Latin American region. We operate as Lending Club or Prosper do their business in US. Afluenta is the first authorized P2P marketplace in the region. We solved the regulatory and tax issues initially in Argentina and then in Peru using current legislation allowing us to run a marketplace lender without asking for new laws or changing current regulations. On the other side, our technology is world class and Afluenta developed innovative features for lenders to operate simple, faster and profitable such as secondary market, automate investing, CRM of collections among other and add 100% transparency of all the data in the investment platform. Continue reading →
