HK Marketplace Lender WeLab Secures $25 Million Credit Facility from ING Bank

ING Bank upped its investment in Hong Kong marketplace lender WeLab with a credit facility of $25 million.

This follows a $160 million Series B round in the mobile and online lending company led by ING and Khazanah Nasional Bank.  Founded in 2013, WeLab operates Wolaidai, a Chinese mobile lending platform for loans ranging from $50- $500 and WeLend, a P2P lending site in Hong Kong which has processed over $4 billion in loans since inception.

In the near future, the company wants to tap into the bank loan market to raise an additional $50 million and make a foray into the insurance market.

“We believe this credit facility is one of the first completed by a major bank to fund the portfolio growth of a fintech company in Asia and are confident that this will open more doors to institutional funding in the near future,” WeLab founder and CEO Simon Loong told DealStreet Asia.

The firm is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Yuri Milner and Guangdong Technology Financial Group. WeLend was launched as a social lending platform targeting debt consolidators and small businesses for loans up to $20,000 for two years. With the Chinese P2P market poised to take over 9 percent of total retail loans by 2018 and high fintech adoption (29 percent digital users) in Hong Kong, will this be the first of many such bets?