Tamweeli PLATFORM

Tamweeli Platform

The Tamweeli Platform began with the simple goal of efficiently connecting SME businesses with potential funders. The matchmaking platform was designed to harness the security, speed, and simplicity of the Internet by streamlining the financing process for both financial intermediaries and SMEs.

Via Tamweeli Platform, business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs can present funding requests anonymously to multiple financial intermediaries through a single application, saving time, expenses, and travel inconveniences. On the other side of the ledger, financial intermediaries set the parameters for the types of loan requests they are interested in reviewing, which include economic sectors, geographic location, amounts, and the type of business. They will subsequently only receive high-level summaries of funding pitches that satisfy these filtering preferences.

Similar to a “dating service”, where both sides must indicate their willingness before proceeding, an entrepreneur will have the opportunity to review expressions of interest from participating financial institutions and decide if they wish to move forward. The financial intermediary will then gain access to the details of the financing request on a confidential basis, including the identity, credit application, business plan, and financial background of the entrepreneur. At this point, the two parties will enter into direct bilateral negotiations, and potentially a financing arrangement. The financial intermediary will conduct its own due diligence and underwriting of the potential borrower. Via Tamweeli, the financial intermediary will immediately get access to 70 to 80% of the information it typically needs to gather from a potential client in a standardized format, thereby saving time and upfront costs. For the entrepreneurs, they only need to submit one standard application on Tamweeli to reach multiple lenders. There is no initial cost to either the entrepreneur or the financial intermediary to access Tamweeli. Only when a transaction is executed via the platform will the financial intermediary pay a success fee to Tamweeli.

To date, over $22 million in financing has been facilitated via the Tamweeli Platform. The success of the business matchmaking platform has led to other growth opportunities, and Tamweeli has expanded into additional financial services including insurance and personal loans.

• Insurance: Though vehicle insurance is the only protection required by law in Palestine, six out of the eight Palestinian insurance companies now offer their products on the Tamweeli platform. To date, over $17 million worth of insurance policies have been purchased, covering assets, workers, and even lives. Tamweeli is helping to spread awareness regarding the importance of insurance policies, creating a new market which had previously not existed.
• Personal Banking: Tamweeli has also moved beyond business transactions and begun facilitating personal loans, housing and mortgage loans, savings accounts, and credits cards to individuals and families, including the previously unbanked. To date, more than $2.8 million in personal loans have been facilitated by Tamweeli. Promoting the opening of bank accounts was added to support the Palestinian National Financial Inclusion Strategy objectives, which stated the importance of increasing the percentage of Palestinians with access to financial services in order to promote greater economic development. Individuals can apply for personal loans to finance education or cover healthcare-related costs, all via the same match-making mechanism pioneered by the original Tamweeli model.