Tala Eyes Global Market

Tala, the global Fintech company has announced plans to go after the 10 trillion US dollar global fintech market, defining it as the global majority population which represents 52 per cent of the world’s population.

In the second phase of its operations, Tala will target this population that has historically been excluded by legacy finance institutions.

Jori Pearsall, Global Chief Business Officer at Tala, revealed this during the company’s 10th-anniversary celebrations that took place today at Radisson Blu Hotel, Upper Hill.

“Located primarily in emerging markets, they earn money in both the formal and informal economies but often don’t have access to savings, credit, bill payment tools or the ability to affordably transfer money. The Global Majority have immense potential, and we’ve witnessed their power. Tala proves that the old barriers can be overcome with innovative solutions, creativity, and radical trust” said Jori as he detailed Tala’s 10-year journey.

Since Tala launched, as a market pioneer, Kenya has made great strides towards financial inclusivity.  “Today, we have a digital credit industry that serves a total of 8 million customers, disbursing between $77.5M to 116.28M Kenya shillings per month. The impact has been significant as highlighted in Tala’s 2023 impact report. Tala was born as a market pioneer in 2014 and we have since served over 3.5m Kenyans and disbursed more than $2.32B. Globally, we have served more than 9 million customers and disbursed $5.81B globally across The Philippines, Mexico, and India.

Looking into the future, Tala’s focus for the next decade will be 3 pronged, that is, more customer-centric innovation coupled with ecosystem partnerships, expansion into other East African markets & rest of the continent and policy/regulation to further drive financial inclusion.

Speaking on the future of the company, Annstella Mumbi, General Manager of Tala Kenya said, “Moving into the next decade, we will be moving to a second phase of the industry, thinking beyond access and into the ability of the industry and Tala to offer more customer-centric solutions. With our in-depth understanding of the mass market customer, and our data science capabilities, we are increasing our focus on partnerships and being an ecosystem enabler. We are not your competitor but your enabler in opening up access to credit”

In her remarks delivered by Anne Wamae, Economic advisor for Investments, Rebecca Miano, EGH, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry invited Tala to explore collaboration with her ministry’s newly launched Karibu business Support Centre (KBSC), a one-stop shop that provides information and guidance to investors, traders and manufacturers-both physically and through an online portal.

In line with the new direction, Tala’s data, machine learning and AI tooling platform was rebuilt in 2023 to take full advantage of Tala’s proprietary data sets and continue expanding financial access and growing customer lifetime value. End-to-end credit approval decisions for Tala customers, from application submission to decision, now take less than three seconds on average. Models for credit and fraud learn in real-time, meaning that we can quickly adapt to changing customer needs and data availability markets.