Financial services startup raises $3m to bring more customers to banks

Photo credit: Jirnexu has raised a series A funding round of US$3 million, it announced today. The round was led by Singapore-based venture capital firm DMP, along with Celebes Capital, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Nullabor, Tuas Capital Partners, and Anfield Equities. Steve Melhuish, better known as the CEO and co-founder of PropertyGuru, also participated as a private investor.

The startup’s latest offering, XpressApply, simplifies the application process for financial products.

The funding is immediately available to the company in its entirety and will be used exclusively for growth, CEO and co-founder Yuen Tuck “YT” Siew tells Tech in Asia.

Investors in the company had to fulfill three basic criteria, according to YT: understand the business, trust in the team running it, and be able to help the company grow. “It is very easy to judge whether a potential investor meets these criteria based on the questions they ask about the business and the terms they request,” he says.

DMP had followed the startup for about two years before investing in it. In doing so, it helped in areas like headhunting, advising on future fundraising, and providing legal support. It ticked all three boxes nicely.

Finders keepers

Jirnexu, formerly known as Saving Plus, makes customer acquisition, retention, and management software focusing on banks, insurance companies, and telecommunications providers. The startup figures there’s a total addressable market of US$25 billion per year for its services in Southeast Asia alone.

At the moment, Jirnexu services clients like Alliance Bank, AEON, Citibank, HSBC, Manulife, OCBC Bank, RHB, Standard Chartered, Tokio Marine Life, U Mobile, and XOX Mobile, among others.

The Jirnexu team. Photo credit: Jirnexu.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, it runs financial comparison sites KreditGoGo and RinggitPlus respectively.

The startup’s latest offering is XpressApply, an online service that simplifies the application process for financial products. It manages this by turning long and tedious forms into simple questionnaires that can be filled out within 10 minutes. Jirnexu claims the product has achieved a customer conversion rate – potential customers convinced to sign up – of 200 percent higher than traditional lead generation methods.

Golden opportunity

The time was right for Jirnexu to top up its coffers, as it’s a good time to be in the financial services market across Southeast Asia, YT says. In the financial comparison space, there are startups like Singapore’s MoneySmart, Indonesia’s HaloMoney, and Malaysia’s iMoney.

We have to invest in the product because there is no room for error in what we do.

“I believe the winner in the long term will be the company that provides the most scalable and efficient process for digital application processing and product transaction while simultaneously delivering more value and a better customer experience to the consumer,” YT says.