Announcing the cohort: Finance Forward Latin America 2019

We’re excited to announce the full cohort for the 2019 class of our Finance Forward Latin Americaaccelerator. Scroll down to the bottom to see the full list of companies.

Village Capital runs the most active financial health accelerator in Latin America. We’ve run four programs in the region in total, helping more than 40 early-stage entrepreneurs improve their investment-readiness and performing due diligence on hundreds more.

Our work sourcing early-stage startups gives us insight into upcoming trends in fintech innovation. While previous programs were more focused on “financial inclusion” — startups helping people access basic financial services — we broadened our selection process this time to take a wider lens of “financial health”. The reason? More Latin Americans have access to bank accounts and basic financial services than ever before, and while there is a lot of work left to do, we’re excited about “what’s next” in fintech innovation.

We’re proud of the diversity of this year’s cohort. We received 182 applications for Finance Forward Latin America, from entrepreneurs in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. We were proud that 32% of applicants this year had a female founder or co-founder, and 46% are headquartered outside the capital city of their country.

After a careful selection process with insights from cross-regional experts, here are the 12 startups that are improving financial health in Latin America:

1. ArriendoAsegurado (Chile) helps property owners to make sure they get their rent payment every month, while allowing individuals to access formal housing without the need to show collateral or an upfront cash advance.
2. CFOremoto (Chile) provides real time automated financial control, visibility, cash flow projections, alerts & recommendations to support decision making processes and connect with funding sources.
3. CloQ (Brazil) provides cheaper and easy-to-reach online and mobile app loans, starting at USD $25, to the low-income and unbanked population.
4. Colektia (Chile) is a debt collection platform that helps any company that makes recurring charges in Latin America improve their debt collection efficiency through an AI platform.
5. DinDin (Brazil) provides financial services to the un/underbanked individuals and businesses in Brazil through its proprietary app, web-based internet banking and API platforms.
6. Ewally (Brazil) is a digital wallet that helps the unbanked and very-low-income population in Brazil, especially in remote towns, to pay bills, top up their prepaid mobile phone, and collect and transfer money.
7. IncluirTec (Colombia) generates a profile of agricultural producers and microentrepreneurs to give access to formal credit based on their economic and productive capacities, and approved credit under conditions that reflect their ability to repay.
8. MiBolsillo (Peru) digitalizes financial behaviors, data, and tasks to improve financial health & access to formal financial services for un/underbanked individuals and MSMEs in LatAm.
9. Monetus (Brazil) is a digital wealth building service. Through financial planning, good investments, and design, they build investment portfolios for their clients, and guides them towards achieving their financial goals.
10. Movva.tech (Brazil) is the first Nudgebot company. It both prevents default and also enhance people’s financial decision-making by using behavioral economics and artificial intelligence.
11. Suyo (Colombia) created a platform and process that unlocks the economic value of low-income families’ homes with technology-enabled property formalization services.
12. Übank (Mexico) makes tools and API’s for banks and financial institutions, so their customers can save for their goals by transforming their everyday activities into small savings.

Finance Forward Latin America 2019 is part of Finance Forward, a multi-year global coalition led by founding partners MetLife Foundation, PayPal, and Village Capital to support entrepreneurs on four continents who are building tech-enabled solutions to place-based challenges around financial health, economic mobility, and community resilience. Moody’s is also supporting our work in Latin America.