The best financial systems are ones that are invisible—they work seamlessly in the background, enabling people, businesses, and governments to thrive. Yet in the Philippines, the lack of foundational infrastructure around credit scoring remains a salient, glaring hole that has contributed to a $221 billion MSME credit gap and a reality where three-fourths of Filipino adults have no access to formal credit. Indeed, the existing infrastructure is not just outdated, it is fundamentally misaligned with the requirements of a rapidly emerging economy.
Enter LenderLink. They’re building the first high-tech, real-time credit bureau in the Philippines, designed from the ground up for the digital era. Their approach is a fundamental shift in how credit assessment data is shared, accessed, and utilized. By aggregating and standardizing consumer credit data through API integrations with lenders, collection agencies, credit bureaus, and third-party sources, LenderLink provides financial institutions with a new kind of live intelligence that is dynamic, exhaustive, and built for scale.
Data from the 2024 edition of the Google-Bain-Temasek e-Conomy Report shows that lending accounts for 22% of digital financial services revenues in Southeast Asia, and is the main driver of the sector’s surging 35% year over year growth last year. Embedded credit is at the heart of this uptick, integrating lending directly through technology into platforms that individuals and companies are already using every day. Some of our existing portfolio companies, such as OneLot and Netbank, are proving this model with their rapid progress, while industry leaders like Salmon, BillEase, ProCredit, and First Circle are validating this enormous demand. Yet without high quality credit infrastructure, the full potential of digital lending remains out of reach. Risk remains high, pricing remains inefficient, and millions remain underserved.
What sets LenderLink apart isn’t just the technology—it’s the caliber of the founding team and the clarity of their vision. Founders Christo Georgiev, Dimitar Manolov, Dimo Hristov, and Petya Dimitrova were all former executives at Finscore, a telco-data based risk assessment company for the Philippines instrumental in building, scaling, and ultimately exiting the business in 2023. Besides bringing to the table deep domain expertise in fintech, credit assessment, and data science, their years of industry experience has helped to inform their insight that lenders can only make optimal lending decisions through real-time credit intelligence, rather than the status quo of static and siloed information.
We share the belief with the LenderLink founders that their platform will be pivotal in enabling lenders of all types—from traditional financial institutions and cash lenders to digital banks and BNPLs—to effectively grow their loanbooks while mitigating risk. We have deep conviction that LenderLink’s ability to deliver real-time, quality credit data will be a game-changer for an ecosystem that has traditionally struggled with fragmented and outdated credit information.
As both traditional and digital lending continues to accelerate in the Philippines, the demand for high-quality, instantaneous data will only grow. We see a path for LenderLink to become a foundational layer within the country’s lending ecosystem, reducing friction between lenders and borrowers, and ultimately transforming the way consumer credit is accessed.
At Kaya, we aim to invest in companies that redefine industries, not just iterate on them. LenderLink is doing exactly that, and we are thrilled to be supporting them as they build the future of credit data access in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
