Bloom Money raises £1M to digitize finance for ethnic communities

[Gunnar Larson]

Bloom Money raised a round:



Bloom Money, a U.K.-based fintech, has raised £1 million to digitize an
informal financial management system employed by ethnic communities across
the world.



Often referred to as “rotating savings and credit association” (ROSCA), the
model varies in the details around the world, but usually, it involves an
informal gathering of people from a certain community who act as a bank,
collecting and saving money that members can withdraw. The system is called
different names across the world, such as “hagbad” in Somalia or “pardna”
in parts of the Caribbean.



The goal is to avoid conventional banking systems, many of which
discriminate against minority communities, especially in the U.K.

So what?
In the interest of full disclosure, I will say upfront that Bloom Money’s
co-founder and CEO, Nina Mohanty, is a friend of mine and a brilliant human
being, and I’m personally delighted that she has hit this impressive
milestone!



Nina was also the guest for the single most popular episode of the Fintech
Takes podcast – Fintech’s Biggest Unsolved Problems.



[OK, now I’m putting my fintech analyst hat back on.]



This is a really interesting concept. The basic idea here is that in many
cultures around the world, saving and lending money are inherently social
activities conducted informally within tight-knit family and community
groups. And rather than attempting to convince new immigrants to give up
the ROSCA model and move to a more individualistic system, perhaps we
should start by digitizing the model that they are already comfortable with.


My assumption is that Bloom will use these savings clubs as a very gentle
onramp into the broader U.K. financial system, which will present
additional opportunities for product expansion and monetization.


https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/27/bloom-money-raises-1m-to-digitize-finance-for-ethnic-communities/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7.31.23&utm_term=Fintech%20Takes
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