Business News of Monday, 9 November 2015

Source: Chris Koney

Tutu Agyare Bets on Moneyboxx

Tutu Agyare-Founder & Chief Investment Officer-Nubuke Investments. Tutu Agyare-Founder & Chief Investment Officer-Nubuke Investments.

UK born Ghanaian international financier and investment banker Tutu Agyare believes he’s discovered the next great financial system disruption in mobile technology-based lending service MoneyBoxx, a product of Renaizance Capital Solutions Microfinance (RCSM), designed and piloted by award-winning mobile value-added service provider TXT Ghana.

Agyare currently serves as Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer for Nubuke Investments, a firm he founded in 2007 that specializes in African investments where catalysts for significant growth exist and the companies most strategically positioned to capitalize on them. Prior to Nubuke, Agyare spent 21 years with UBS Investment Bank specializing in emerging markets.

Moneyboxx is the latest high-reward investment opportunity identified by Agyare in Ghana, a country with a long history of political and economic stability.

Moneyboxx is a lending facility entirely built around mobile technology, from the capture of customers’ information to pre-approval to disbursement.

It mitigates lending risk by working in tandem with human resource departments to provide loans to their employees secured by their salaries.

The service is tailored to the majority of those living and working in emerging economies like Ghana where there is a strong need for the financial flexibility that a revolving credit line provides, yet there is little availability of such to the average consumer because of the challenges in quantifying risk.

The MoneyBoxx Know-Your-Customer system, however, reduces the default rate to a negligible amount by directly deducting loan payments from employee salaries, as well as provides a strong pool of data for determining credit worthiness.

Explaining the tremendous growth opportunity he sees in Moneyboxx, Tutu Agyare said, “Technology’s ability to disrupt everyday needs is demonstrated through what MoneyBoxx has done and can potentially become for Africa with high growth in micro-lending and even higher growth in mobile penetration. In an emerging economy that lacks many of the structures and systems of a more developed one, mobile technology isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity for survival. Any service with a viable chance of enhancing people’s lives must embrace mobile as the most efficient way to interact with its customers.”

The investment by Nubuke is expected to deliver to MoneyBoxx $20m in capital infusion, systems upgrade and corporate governance expertise to jumpstart the Pan-African ambitions of the brand.

To align with the Bank of Ghana regulations, MoneyBoxx and TXT Ghana’s holding company, TXTGroup, completed the acquisition of Renaizance Capital Solutions Microfinance in June 2015, thus opening the door for nationwide deployment of the service.

With the completion of this acquisition and the investment of Tutu Agyare’s Nubuke Investments, MoneyBoxx has begun a massive recruitment drive across all business segments with an ambitious expectation of 50,000 signups by end of first quarter 2016.

TXTGroup’s Group Chairman Nii Sodza Laryea expressed his excitement by stating, “The support of Tutu Agyare in conjunction with MoneyBoxx’s proven system will allow MoneyBoxx to scale faster and to more quickly become the leader in financial technology solutions for the African market that we envisioned it would when we conceived it.”