Company Reports - Fundamo
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Fundamo
Providing a mobile financial platform
Written by Ian Armitage & Produced by Stuart Shirra
Fundamo is the world’s largest specialist mobile financial services provider. It is a real trendsetter and its name comes from ‘fundamentally mobile’, which is an interesting snippet, but central to its goal of making electronic money accessible to all.
“We provide solutions for mobile banking and payment, solutions that can be deployed by either mobile operators or banks,” says CEO Hannes Van Rensburg. “And these mobile banking solutions are specifically tailored to emerging economies where the solutions are utilised for customers that do not have access to financial services or bank accounts. We are the market leader not just in Africa, but globally; our technology is used more widely than any other supplier in this space. We are pioneers of the technology.”
Fundamo, when it was formed, was the embodiment of a mad idea; today, mobile banking is nothing new, although in its infancy still. But it was then. Van Rensburg wanted to use mobile phones as a secure payment device. He had his great idea, nurtured it, and has built a business around it. “The company has made a number of new deployments over the years,” he explains. “In the last year alone, we have been very successful with our deployments. We have a number of clients live, more so than most; we can actively claim that we have the biggest market share for mobile financial services live. And we have also announced a new product, our enterprise edition, which is a combination of 10 years of experience that we have packaged into one. And that was announced in 2009 and we started shipping it to our first clients at the start of 2010.”
Fundamo has been a visionary in predicting the trend towards providing financial services through mobile phones and the impact this will have on the delivery of financial services, in both developing and developed markets. There were only four people involved when the company began, but the management team today is completely different from that original team. Fundamo has been highly focused on sourcing top people with the right type of experience to fulfil the growing needs of the company. “We are proud of what we’ve done so far,” Van Rensburg says. Fundamo´s leadership team has a strong background in the financial services industry and has taken full advantage of the unique characteristics of the mobile phone and the mobile user experience to create something unique, simple and increasingly popular.
BEST IN CLASS
From its inception, Fundamo has been committed to providing best in class technology and investing research and development. This has become even more important in recent times. With mobile banking and payments moving into mainstream adoption, the requirement from clients is shifting from point solutions to establishing a platform for growth, says Van Rensburg, which will serve their current and future needs. “Are we unique? Do we have a unique approach to mobile banking? Yes,” he says. “Let me tell you a bit more about how it works. The software gets installed, modified and configured, so that our customer – which will typically be a mobile operator like MTN or a bank like Standard Bank – can offer financial services to poor people. And the poor people typically get access to our software either through their mobile phones or through agents – people that offer them services in remote areas. These customers can use the software to send money, receive money, save money or to use money to buy things.”
Fundamo is focused, determined. It is also well geared for continued growth. “We are very focused on what we do; we are not a diversified company,” Van Rensburg explains. “We believe that bringing financial services to the poor is a specialised industry; it is not something that you can do part-time or on the side. It requires a lot of knowledge and expertise and that’s what we focus on. We feel that we are very different from a lot of our competitors because we have substantial knowledge and expertise that our competitors don’t have.”
Van Rensburg believes that providing more people with financial services that they previously couldn’t access will lead to a major revolution. “It will change life the way that we know it in many ways,” he says.
“In Africa, it will bring hundreds of millions of people into the formal financial services industry. People will be able to participate in economy activities in different ways. They will be able to borrow money so that they can start businesses. They will be able to save money, so that they can send their children to university. And it will improve education. So what we are busy with is a major revolution that will impact the lives of half of Africa, and even that’s an underestimation.”
A key element of Fundamo´s strategy is to work in collaboration with specialist organisations to effectively meet the needs of its clients in a rapidly accelerating global mobile financial services market.
Van Rensburg tells us what prevalent developments he sees in the industry right now: “One big trend is that major corporations, specifically mobile operators, are getting into this space very aggressively.
“There are some banks that are embracing this technology too, but I don’t think there’s a mobile operator today without some kind of strategy around mobile money.”
Fundamo invests heavily in R&D and is focusing on three geographical focus areas. Van Rensburg. “Asia Pacific is another where we have an office in Singapore that focuses on that par t of the market, and recently we’ve identified Latin America as a growth area for us.”
The firm, perhaps unsurprisingly, is doing well financially. “We’re doing very well financially; we’re growing significantly, 50 percent plus year on year,” Van Rensburg says. “And that’s obviously challenging. While growth is good, it also brings its challenges. We have excellent staff who we’re investing heavily in. We have great execut ive management and great shareholders supporting us. I think if you put all that in the mix, combined with the fact that our product is in high demand, we will be very FACTS at a Glance successful. I think what is important for us is that we structure ourselves in such a way that we can deliver our expectations, and we’re working really hard to do that.
“In a business where our competitive advantage is our exper tise, knowledge, experience, then it stands to reason that our people are very important to us because the expertise is expatiated in them,” he continues. “We invest a lot in them, but we also have a lot of people that share the same vision, people that are excited about what we’re doing here and want to be a part of it.”
Van Rensberg is convinced that you can only be successful if you focus on your clients. If a client is unhappy, drop everything. Don’t stop until your client is happy again. This has suited Fundamo well in the past.
“My dream is to make electronic money accessible to everyone,” Van Rensburg concludes.
“We provide solutions for mobile banking and payment, solutions that can be deployed by either mobile operators or banks,” says CEO Hannes Van Rensburg. “And these mobile banking solutions are specifically tailored to emerging economies where the solutions are utilised for customers that do not have access to financial services or bank accounts. We are the market leader not just in Africa, but globally; our technology is used more widely than any other supplier in this space. We are pioneers of the technology.”
Fundamo, when it was formed, was the embodiment of a mad idea; today, mobile banking is nothing new, although in its infancy still. But it was then. Van Rensburg wanted to use mobile phones as a secure payment device. He had his great idea, nurtured it, and has built a business around it. “The company has made a number of new deployments over the years,” he explains. “In the last year alone, we have been very successful with our deployments. We have a number of clients live, more so than most; we can actively claim that we have the biggest market share for mobile financial services live. And we have also announced a new product, our enterprise edition, which is a combination of 10 years of experience that we have packaged into one. And that was announced in 2009 and we started shipping it to our first clients at the start of 2010.”
Fundamo has been a visionary in predicting the trend towards providing financial services through mobile phones and the impact this will have on the delivery of financial services, in both developing and developed markets. There were only four people involved when the company began, but the management team today is completely different from that original team. Fundamo has been highly focused on sourcing top people with the right type of experience to fulfil the growing needs of the company. “We are proud of what we’ve done so far,” Van Rensburg says. Fundamo´s leadership team has a strong background in the financial services industry and has taken full advantage of the unique characteristics of the mobile phone and the mobile user experience to create something unique, simple and increasingly popular.
BEST IN CLASS
From its inception, Fundamo has been committed to providing best in class technology and investing research and development. This has become even more important in recent times. With mobile banking and payments moving into mainstream adoption, the requirement from clients is shifting from point solutions to establishing a platform for growth, says Van Rensburg, which will serve their current and future needs. “Are we unique? Do we have a unique approach to mobile banking? Yes,” he says. “Let me tell you a bit more about how it works. The software gets installed, modified and configured, so that our customer – which will typically be a mobile operator like MTN or a bank like Standard Bank – can offer financial services to poor people. And the poor people typically get access to our software either through their mobile phones or through agents – people that offer them services in remote areas. These customers can use the software to send money, receive money, save money or to use money to buy things.”
Fundamo is focused, determined. It is also well geared for continued growth. “We are very focused on what we do; we are not a diversified company,” Van Rensburg explains. “We believe that bringing financial services to the poor is a specialised industry; it is not something that you can do part-time or on the side. It requires a lot of knowledge and expertise and that’s what we focus on. We feel that we are very different from a lot of our competitors because we have substantial knowledge and expertise that our competitors don’t have.”
Van Rensburg believes that providing more people with financial services that they previously couldn’t access will lead to a major revolution. “It will change life the way that we know it in many ways,” he says.
“In Africa, it will bring hundreds of millions of people into the formal financial services industry. People will be able to participate in economy activities in different ways. They will be able to borrow money so that they can start businesses. They will be able to save money, so that they can send their children to university. And it will improve education. So what we are busy with is a major revolution that will impact the lives of half of Africa, and even that’s an underestimation.”
A key element of Fundamo´s strategy is to work in collaboration with specialist organisations to effectively meet the needs of its clients in a rapidly accelerating global mobile financial services market.
Van Rensburg tells us what prevalent developments he sees in the industry right now: “One big trend is that major corporations, specifically mobile operators, are getting into this space very aggressively.
“There are some banks that are embracing this technology too, but I don’t think there’s a mobile operator today without some kind of strategy around mobile money.”
Fundamo invests heavily in R&D and is focusing on three geographical focus areas. Van Rensburg. “Asia Pacific is another where we have an office in Singapore that focuses on that par t of the market, and recently we’ve identified Latin America as a growth area for us.”
The firm, perhaps unsurprisingly, is doing well financially. “We’re doing very well financially; we’re growing significantly, 50 percent plus year on year,” Van Rensburg says. “And that’s obviously challenging. While growth is good, it also brings its challenges. We have excellent staff who we’re investing heavily in. We have great execut ive management and great shareholders supporting us. I think if you put all that in the mix, combined with the fact that our product is in high demand, we will be very FACTS at a Glance successful. I think what is important for us is that we structure ourselves in such a way that we can deliver our expectations, and we’re working really hard to do that.
“In a business where our competitive advantage is our exper tise, knowledge, experience, then it stands to reason that our people are very important to us because the expertise is expatiated in them,” he continues. “We invest a lot in them, but we also have a lot of people that share the same vision, people that are excited about what we’re doing here and want to be a part of it.”
Van Rensberg is convinced that you can only be successful if you focus on your clients. If a client is unhappy, drop everything. Don’t stop until your client is happy again. This has suited Fundamo well in the past.
“My dream is to make electronic money accessible to everyone,” Van Rensburg concludes.
