Interest in lending products in Southeast Asia (SEA) has risen by 15 percent since 2020, according to an investment platform Robocash Group.

Robocash said in a statement on Thursday that the fastest growing segment of lending in the region is related to online loans.

It said that since January 2020, the number of these queries has increased by 96.4 percent.

The study considers Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Brunei.

It is based on monthly data from Google Ads for the period from January 2020 to April 2023 and included 88 keyword combinations related to lending.

All data have grouped in bigger categories such as Auto & Moto Loan, Salary Loan, Home Loan, Education Loan, Credit Card, Instalment Loan, Online Loan and others.

According to Robocash, the total number of monthly requests for the period from January 2020 to April 2023 has increased by 14.6 percent, from 647,200 to 741,500 thousand per month.

The fastest growing segment is represented by online loans, it said.

This group of requests is growing on average by 1.6 percent per month and in total, it has increased by 96.4 percent since January 2020.

At the same time, such queries as education loans, show a negative trend (-0.5 percent monthly).

The slowest-growing requests are those related to home loans (+0.1 percent monthly).

“These findings indicate stable demand in Southeast Asia for online loans and for lending in general,” said Natalya Ischenko, Chief Executive Officer of Robocash.

“Our corporate data also confirm this tendency. For instance, the number of loans issued by our company in the Philippines grew by 251 percent in 2021 and by 72 percent in 2022,

“In Vietnam, it increased by 271 percent in 2021 and by 105 percent last year. This year we also expect the trend to continue,” she added.

Robocash is a group of companies, which provides FinTech services in Asia and Europe.

Founded in 2013, the group focuses on providing financial solutions for the underserved by the traditional banking system.

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