Fido has expanded its original suite of microfinance products into savings and microinsurance offerings for customers in Ghana and Uganda. That includes climate coverage for floods, droughts, fires and other weather-related incidents that impact micro-businesses.
Fido secured a $5.5 million loan from Swiss impact investment manager Symbiotics to help the company build on its AI-powered underwriting capabilities and fraud detection.
A portion of the capital came from the Regional MSME Investment Fund for Sub-Saharan Africa, a blended-finance fund backed by Symbiotics, Dutch bank ASN, development finance agencies KfW and FMO and others. The fund provides local currency financing for lenders to micro-entrepreneurs in 20 African countries.
Access to insurance
In addition to micro personal and business loans, the Fido app offers a very low savings account that starts at 20 Ghanaian cedis, or about $1.80. It offers buy-now-pay-later mobile phone financing in partnership with Ghanaian electronics retailer, Maxbuy.
And, for customers that take a 2,000 cedi line of credit, it offers options for life insurance, short-term disability cover and small business climate insurance. FIDO’s $30 million financing round in 2024 included participation from BlueOrchard’s InsuResilience Fund to support its insurance expansion.
