Launched in February 2017 Funding Societies Malaysia is the leading SME Digital Financing platform in Southeast Asia. Fund-ing Societies assists SME owners by providing funding access for them to start or grow their businesses and help them manage their transactions and cash flows. This is done by providing short-term working capital for inventory purchase, marketing spend, expansion and others. Applications are applied and processed digitally on their platform. Funding Societies currently operates in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, making it the largest SME digital financ-ing platform in the region. It was recently reported that Funding Societies Malaysia is on track to surpass its RM1.00 billion mark for financing disbursements in the country; from the current RM700.00 million.
Founder and CEO of Founding Societies Malay-sia, Wong Kah Meng’s background is in consult-ing, focusing on banking and financial services on areas like banking strategy, risk management and operations. His experience with SME and retail customers showed that there is a visible financing gap in that segment as they are not adequately provided for by financial institutions unlike financing for individual customers and large corporations. Financing for individual customers for example, is readily available by lenders given the availability of homogenised prod-ucts such as personal and housing financing, credit cards and hire purchase. Larger business corporations are also extended financing and loans given the presumed bigger profit margin and security provided for the loans/financing.