Sycamore offers P2P lending solutions to increase financial inclusion

Fintechs that offer lending solutions help individuals and companies gain increased access to credit. They have made it easy for underserved people to enter the financial space through their offerings.

Sycamore is one of the leading fintechs enabling individuals and businesses through its investment and loan offerings.

We chatted briefly with Sycamore’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), who discussed what they do, their forecast for the just-concluded Fintech Summit, and what we can expect from them in the future.

Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Sycamore.

My name is Mayowa Adeosun, COO and co-founder of Sycamore. I ensure that the operations and financial aspects of the business run smoothly. I put processes and procedures in place to ensure we can achieve our strategic goals and objectives. It involves overseeing the day-to-day activity of the departments under me. At the C-suite level, I am more engaged in strategic conversations to move the needle forward.

My name is Mayowa Adeosun, COO and co-founder of Sycamore. I make sure that the operations and financial aspects of the business run smoothly. I put processes and procedures in place to ensure we can achieve our strategic goals and objectives. At the C-suite level, I am more engaged in strategic conversations to move the needle forward as the business grows.

Tell us more about Sycamore and its offerings.

Sycamore is an economical solution. Essentially, we are a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending company that connects two different bodies. Whether it is an individual or a business, we match them and facilitate a transaction. So someone can request a loan and we can match them with a potential lender who can fulfill that request and this will happen seamlessly within a very short period of time.

We have not yet perfected it to be equal to one-to-one, but we are working towards developing the solution to the point where people can select transactions individually. So that’s Sycamore’s bread and butter.

We have introduced other financial solutions that may benefit our users. We have a product called Loan Friends. It’s also P2P, but it’s more at the retail level. So you may have a friend or a family member who is interested in taking a short-term loan and because of your relationship and your understanding, they can come to the platform.

They can ask directly from you as a lender and you can have very structured mini-contracts that help them organize the transaction and leave you without worrying about whether they will pay back or how they will pay back and all the fine details.

Secondly, we provide personal and business loans on our platform. Third, users can buy airtime and perform other digital transactions. These are three basic services that Sycamore offers, and we continue to develop as much as possible to solve these problems.

What excites you about The Fintech Summit?

What excites me about The Fintech Summit is that it brings so many different players in the Fintech industry together under one roof and allows us to see what everyone is doing, where everyone is and what kind of products and services are available. Even as a fintech player, it can sometimes be quite difficult to track everything that is happening in the industry.

So the Fintech Summit helps us bring together everything that is happening and touches on topics like financial inclusion, another difficult topic and area that most fintechs, especially in the lending space, have tried to help solve. I am also excited to hear one of my professors, Olayinka David-West, from the Lagos Business School, speak.

What pain points do you think need to be addressed in Africa’s Fintech sector?

Fintech is very broad in the sense that many different financial transactions, services and products are categorized under Fintech. In the area of ​​lending, the new circular from the CBN, which increases the cost of debt, will eventually push many potential borrowers out of the market because they will not be able to afford the interest rates.

So I think one of the pain points is finding innovative ways to reduce operating costs and run a very lean business so that you can pass on as many savings to the customer so they can continue to receive these loans and grow their business.

In the ecosystem under Fintech, I think one of the pain points will be that we want to have the ability to not only buy US stocks and stocks of foreign companies, but explore as many options as possible to create a financial product that protects you in different times and markets. We have seen what happened recently with Meta, Twitter, etc. Is there an option for a Nigerian to win, even if the company’s share prices go down? They call it short selling, and I’m not sure if there are any fintechs that have been successful at it.

So in the sense of financial services, is a pain point that emerges in the insurance sector. I think, as a culture, we still haven’t adopted insurance, which ultimately could be an opportunity for an insurance technology company to change the culture or change how we think about insurance and introduce it into everyday life: from general insurance, buying your car insurance, to life insurance and things that can help you reduce your financial exposure.

I’m sure there are a lot of things people are doing right now and there are pain points that are big enough for new players to come in and solve.

What effect do you expect from the talks that will take place at the Fintech Summit?

I think the results would be that we would all come out more informed and hopefully more inspired to take on the challenges we have identified during the conversations.

There will be many experts and people with general interests in Fintech present. So I hope that it introduces people who have not yet been exposed to Fintech and helps them grow their passion and interest and build a skill set that is necessary to solve problems.

I would like to partner with other players and see what they offer and have that roundtable discussion to see how we can put our minds together to solve these problems and help Nigeria, Africa and anyone who can benefit from these solutions move forward .

Finally, what should we be looking for from you and Sycamore?

I hope people stay up to date with what we’re doing on the Sycamore mobile app. The mobile app is where we introduce many of our features. Loan Friends is going to be one of the biggest features introduced to the market which will hopefully allow us to play across Nigeria and developing countries in the near future.

Personally, I will try to put out a bit more content to share information and touch on topics that may interest people within the Fintech space and those considering entrepreneurship or currently undergoing an entrepreneurial venture. People can find it on YouTube, most likely posted on Sycamore’s site.