A survey by Bank Negara notes that 19% of local SMEs have struggled to access funding from traditional financial institutions. However, with the recent boom in fintech, businesses can now lean on other forms of financing, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) lending.

The Securities Commision of Malaysia notes that between 2020 and 2021, P2P markets continued to grow, seeing a 122% increase in total fundraising, as well as 48.6% increase in the overall number of successful campaigns and participating issuers in 2021. A great illustration of this take up is Funding Societies, considering that they are the biggest player in Malaysia based on volume in 2021. They helped MSMEs secure a total of RM 309 million, equivalent to 27% of all P2P funding raised in 2021.

In more recent news, the platform announced that they have disbursed RM13.4 billion over more than 5 million transactions to SMEs across Southeast Asia, with RM2 billion disbursed in Malaysia since 2017.

On this episode of BizBytes, we explore the role of P2P Financing in the SME and startup landscape with Chai Kien Poon, Country Head of Funding Societies Malaysia.

We get into what you should know before taking it up, the kind of take up Funding Societies has seen in Malaysia, and what this tells us about the state of SMEs in Malaysia.