liwwa hit $100,000,000 in total direct lending!

This translates into the creation of more than 10,000 jobs and $34,000,000 in income for owners and employees of small and medium businesses (SMEs). We’re proud of our impact and our work to spur innovation within the MENA region!

We contributed $31m (over one-third!) toward this goal in 2022 alone. And these figures exclude Underwriting as Service (UaaS), loans financed on the balance sheets of our bank partners - an additional $10m last year!

liwwa owes its success and impact to you all - its shareholders and supporters.

Last year was also one of additional successes on the fundraising front. We secured additional capital, bringing us to $4.1m against our Pre-Series B goal of $3m. We are proud to count the German development finance institution (DEG) among our newest supporters, having secured funding via DEG’s Up-scaling Program. The $4.1m figure excludes additional debt financing from Triple Jump earmarked for Egypt and the substantial expansion of available debt facilities in Jordan.

In Jordan, our local bank partners increased our available debt facilities by $9.7m in 2022, up to $22m in total. We also established a new relationship with the French development finance institution (Proparco), which extended a EUR 1m facility to further accelerate our growth and impact in Jordan. Finally, we laid the groundwork for a partnership with U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) for sizable support in Jordan and Egypt in 2023!

Our successes and growth are also the consequence of continued investment in SME lending technology. In 2022 we completed the comprehensive revamp of liwwa.com, including substantially improved onboarding and application tools for borrowers. We also implemented substantial changes to liwwa’s credit tools. In addition to continued work on liwwa’s credit engine, our Product Roadmap includes integrations with partners, based in part on pre-existing partnerships with payment platforms. In 2022, we introduced faster, more flexible financing, cutting down processing time from 48 hours to mere minutes for loans below JOD 25,000.

Last – but certainly not least – I am excited to share that we have secured a solid foothold in the Egyptian market! We enter 2023 having established and licenced a holding company under the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA), having hired our core team, and having aligned on our operational procedures for Egypt. Having met many key FRA requirements, we are confident that we will soon be among the first to receive the SME lending license and extend our impact to a major new market.