KUALA LUMPUR: Pertama Digital Bhd's (PDB) has selected Crowdo Holdings Pte Ltd as its first consortium partner for its application for a digital bank licence from Bank Negara Malaysia.
Crowdo is the first batch of fintech companies that was fully licensed by Indonesia's Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (Financial Services Authority) to provide digital lending services to small and medium enterprise (SME).
PDB director of strategy Saify Akhtar said Crowdo brought years of priceless insights and validated turnkey solutions from delivering productive financing to micro-SMEs that were overwhelmingly operated by Indonesians with no credit history.
"This partnership will allow our Malaysian digital bank to immediately serve thousands of businesses in a viable manner from day one.
"This is a key part of our strategy to boost economic participation amongst our financially underserved as quickly as possible, while aligning completely with the framework set by Bank Negara Malaysia," he said in a statement today.
He said digital banking is the company's chosen platform to champion financial inclusion via ethical financial services.
"To do this successfully, we stay close to the rakyat and permanently place our customers at the centre of our digital bank strategy and business model," he said.
Crowdo, launched in 2017 and backed by renowned investor Gobi Partners, is a small medium enterprise (SME)-focused neobank with artificial intelligence-powered credit scoring engine specialised for emerging markets within Asean.
Crowdo co-founder and chief executive officer Leo Shimada said the company's partnership with PDB is aligned with Crowdo neobank's mission to utilise digital innovation to accelerate financial inclusion.
"We are confident that our full set of neobank capabilities across business and product know-how, digital solutions, and advanced AI credit scoring technology will make banking more accessible.
"We are privileged to play a part in Malaysia's post-pandemic recovery in the coming years," he added.
PDB is building a bank with both ethical and digital cores, offering responsible financing for productive purposes, in the best interests of customers.
Through an investment into homegrown govtech company, DAPAT Vista (M) Sdn Bhd, PDB is capitalising on global digital acceleration trends and has recently seen increased uptake in the group's innovative digital solutions such as MyPay and eJamin.