Turnkey Lender, a US-based B2B lending software provider, said it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by German development finance institution DEG.

Although the firm did not reveal the funding stage, the news comes two years after it bagged an undisclosed sum of investment in its Series A1 financing round from OSK Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Majuven, and Western NIS in March 2019.

With the fresh capital, the firm will further expand its R&D facilities, and ramp up marketing efforts to strengthen its foothold in its existing regional markets, including the US, the Asia Pacific, and the EU.

“Turnkey Lender plans to continue our success this year in Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Singapore, and further expansion into Vietnam and Indonesia,” Dmitry Voronenko, CEO and co-founder of TurnKey Lender told KrASIA, adding that the firm already counts notable customers in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines’ largest telecom network Globe Telecom, rural financial institution Cebuana Bank, and Singapore-based fintech firm BigPay.

Founded in 2014, the company provides lending automation and embedded financing software that can be accessed in one platform. The one-stop suite leverages AI to create a credit scoring model that collects an array of data, including credit history, bank account transactional data, and even mobile data, according to Voronenko.

Southeast Asia is home to 290 million people who are not part of the conventional financial system, according to a report by Fitch Ratings. The massive unbanked population mirrors tremendous potential in fintech services and alternative lending solutions.

However, the region’s digital lending scene has been set back by concerns over credit quality last year, with its value of outstanding loans unchanged from USD 23 billion in 2019, according to a report published by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company last November. The report also adjusted its projected 2025 loan book value from USD 110 billion in 2019 to USD 92 billion last year.

Despite the gloomy outlook, Turnkey Lender claims that it has tripled its annual recurring revenue year-over-year, thanks to surging demand for digital lending solutions after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Seeds Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, and Turnkey Lender’s existing investors, including Vertex Ventures, OSK Ventures International, and Majuven, also joined the round.