LatamList – Aflore, a Bogota-based fintech founded by Polymath Ventures in 2012, recently raised $10M in debt from the private debt impact investor Accial Capital.
The fintech seeks to leverage technology and an innovative business model to expand access to formal financial services for Colombia’s 30M unbanked.
Aflore is building a tech-enabled direct sales channel that supports thousands of informal advisors who offer loans and simple financial products to households within their trusted network. It aims to empower thousands of microentrepreneurs– most of whom are women– to flourish with their own businesses.
“In the current context, Aflore uniquely provides responsibly designed credit through mobile-enabled advisors instead of relying on the cost and risk of physical branches. Aflore’s model allows an increasing number of Colombian families to safely borrow and ensure their economic resilience through Covid-19,” commented Jared Miller, CEO at Accial Capital.
The fintech currently has 25,000 Informal Advisors recorded, and disbursed over $16M in products neglected by banks and fintechs.
Ana Barrera, CEO at Aflore, “Solving the problem of financial exclusion in Latin America and Colombia in particular means improving access to credit for informal businesses and clients, a demographic that has been very affected by Covid-19. At Aflore we have been lending to this demographic for the last 6 years, combining high-tech and high touch to serve these clients through our Informal Advisors. We are very excited to be working with Accial Capital, who have deep knowledge of this demographic and a world-class analytics team.”
