Robin Ang, Group CEO & Co-founder of Finology, tells us how they make financial products accessible and seamless for their customers anywhere, anytime.
Tell us about you, your career, and how you founded Finology.
Robin Ang: Coming from a family of restaurateurs, I have displayed a knack for entrepreneurship at a very young age. Fast forward to today, in my almost two decades of entrepreneurial journey, I’ve found numerous award-winning companies in the architectural & interior design industry and construction industry prior to Finology.
Not to mention, I’m excited about working on innovative ideas that can empower individuals while helping businesses to be sustainable and effective – which is why I learned my way into the Fintech industry.
To cut the story short, by 2017, my partner, Jared Lim, and I had already served more than a hundred thousand customers seeking various loan products via Loanstreet – our consumer financial marketplace that we co-founded together in 2012.
With Loanstreet, we feel fulfilled not only because of how great our technology is but also because we know our technology has helped uncles, aunties, and young families. New professionals get easy access to affordable credit. This, in return, has helped so many of our users fulfill their dream home, unlocking personal opportunities for them, improving their mobility, and elevating their quality of life.
However, we see that there is more that we can do. We witnessed the growing frustrations with the cumbersome loan application processes that have been predominantly manual, involving moving stacks of paper from one department to another, running from one bank to compare with another. Simple processes were taking weeks, if not months, to complete. We believe consumer access to financial products should be more inclusive. We also believe this process can be automated to manage risk better while increasing efficiency and stability in the financial system.
With that, Finology – a name inspired by how finance can be accelerated with technology – was born with the mission to make financial products accessible and seamless for everyone everywhere.
Do you have small habits that made a meaningful impact on your life and business?
Robin Ang: I was brought up in a humble family where I learned innovation, resilience, passion, and hard work are the fundamentals in approaching whatever we do in life. So I try always to see the positives during setbacks and maintain a good mindset.
When it comes to establishing successful businesses, I believe that being innovative, building great relationships, and delivering non-compromising quality are the key ingredients.
How does Finology market its product/services online?
Robin Ang: We would like to skip this question as it is strategy-related. Appreciate it.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to manage your online marketing?
Robin Ang: We would like to skip this question as it is strategy-related. Appreciate it.
What is your hiring policy/process, and how do you retain your employees?
Robin Ang: At Finology, we put a lot of emphasis on the organization’s culture as it can make or break a company. One of our core values is Passion for People. This means that we value our people, support their growth, promote
openness, and make decisions guided by empathy.
And it’s applied across the talent management value chain from recruitment (where candidates will have to go through at least two rounds of interviews with different individuals with differing perspectives, including one round for culture fit); in-house learning and development programs to upskilling; as well as how we make a decision.
How are you funding your growth?
Robin Ang: We started with angel investors and continue to sustain ourselves with generated revenues. We are now closing a funding round to fuel our next growth phase.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Robin Ang: I’m happy to share that recently, we (Finology) refreshed our logo and overall corporate identity. We’ve also launched a new website – www.finology-group.com, which has also catered to our Cambodia presence and future regional plans.
We believe that this is a fitting update in showcasing how Finology has grown and evolved in recent years and staying relevant in the game. This exercise also embodied our commitment to continuously pioneer in this evolving global market and make financial products seamless and accessible to everyone.
Moving ahead, we are excited about rolling out our product offerings that have been designed around an embedded end-to-end experience to more emerging countries in Asia-Pacific.
We look forward to connecting with progressive players from the banking, property, automotive, insurance industries, and digital businesses to amplify the efforts to make financial products more accessible and seamless.
Your final thoughts?
Robin Ang: Pre-pandemic, many financial institutions opt to pursue their own innovation and transformation initiatives at their own pace. Pandemic has certainly accelerated digital transformation needs around the world, in every industry, including banking and insurance.
This acceleration means more partnerships and collaborations fostered between the financial institutions and fintech/insurtech companies – it’s the way to go. Established financial institutions don’t have to reinvent the wheel, leverage fintech’s learnings from the past years, and reduce time to market greatly.
We believe more innovative embedded finance will be easily accessible throughout all the common digital platforms with this in place. It will be a norm to have a seamless end-to-end solution for users.
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