Opportunity everywhere
At JUMO we tap into opportunities, with every step we take. While we’ve been recognised for excellence and growth beyond expectation, most of our work is unseen.
At JUMO we tap into opportunities, with every step we take. While we’ve been recognised for excellence and growth beyond expectation, most of our work is unseen.
Perseverance pays off
Since founding in 2015 JUMO has become the market leading Banking as a Service platform that uses AI to power financial services in emerging markets.
JUMO was founded in London by Andrew Watkins-Ball, with a vision of reimagining finance in emerging markets.
The founding team started working to prove that data can be used to predict the financial behaviour of millions of people without access to finance.
Credit risk, engineering and other capabilities were developed with industry-leading talent.
The first ecosystem partnerships were established with Tigo, Airtel and MTN to bring short-term loan products to people and small businesses in Kenya, Zambia and Uganda.
The first funding partner was introduced to the platform. JUMO’s partnership with Letshego Bank in Ghana enabled payment and capital providers to work together to build products.
The company grew rapidly and the team increased from 112 exceptional employees to 197 in 2016.
A huge expansion of the engineering department grew the number of technical experts working for JUMO tenfold.
JUMO won the Mastercard Foundation Clients at the Centre Prize, recognising outstanding value for customers.
The company was selected for class 4 of Google’s Launchpad Accelerator alongside five other African startups.
The AppsAfrica Changing Africa Award, acknowledging game changing initiatives across Africa, went to JUMO.
A funding round of $52m USD was closed. The round was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from Proparco, FinnFund, Vostok Emerging Finance, Gemcorp Capital, and LeapFrog Investments. A further $12.5m USD was secured from Brook Asset Management.
JUMO partnered with Telenor and Telenor Microfinance bank to launch the first commercial product in Asia.
CEO and founder Andrew Watkins-Ball relocated to Singapore to support the company’s expansion in the region.
The use of digital savings, by JUMO in Tanzania and Zambia, grew rapidly.
The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) recognised JUMO as one of 360 Companies to Inspire Africa in 2019.
JUMO was invited to participate in Google’s Launchpad Studio.
The Customer Alignment Award was given to JUMO at LendIt Fintech in San Francisco.
JUMO secured another funding round of US$55 million to support market and product expansion.
Fast Company SA named JUMO one of the most innovative companies owing to advanced data science and Machine Learning capabilities.
Timiza Akiba, a JUMO-powered savings product, grew 30% in 3 months despite COVID conditions.
JUMO won Platinum for Responsible Digital Innovator of the Year and Silver for Product Innovation of the Year at the Global SME Finance Forum Awards.
Award winning recognition
JUMO has significant and measurable impact. Over the past three years we have won multiple awards for innovation, responsible lending, customer-centricity and making a difference.
Buhle Goslar
Buhle has held senior leadership roles for over 18 years in the financial services, technology, retail, and tourism sectors. She has worked across sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in Asian and European markets. A certified international retail banker, she also holds a BCom Marketing Degree from UNISA and an Executive MBA from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town. Buhle has also completed post graduate management programmes in Inclusive Finance, Digital Finance and Social Impact at Harvard Business School, TUFTS Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and Oxford Saïd Business School, respectively.
“We’re the largest fintech in Africa building inclusive digital financial services. JUMO is a tech company with heart.
Michael Ball
Michael has over 20 years’ experience in CFO roles and a successful track record for building scale and value. He is recognised industry-wide for operational efficiency, business transformation, liquidity management, financial structuring, refinancing and IPO preparation and execution. During his previous tenures as Group CEO for Zepz/WorldRemit and Sysco, his financial responsibilities also included strategy and M&A. Michael lives in North London with his wife, Eloise, young daughter, Amelie and two dogs. He likes to keep fit, plays very average golf and is a season ticket holder at Manchester United.
“JUMO is powering growth by constantly building scale and value.
Paul Whelpton
Prior to joining JUMO, Paul spent seven years in various senior roles running analytics teams at Standard Bank. He was most recently the executive responsible for product and pricing across the South African business. Paul’s banking experience spans retail, business and commercial with a specific focus on generating profit from data and analytics. He holds a BCom from the University of Pretoria, an MBA from Gordon Institute of Business Science, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School.
“JUMO is an information enablement company that’s creating value for partners, and ordinary people. Customers can access credit in real time at a low cost of risk.
Susie Squire
Susie joined JUMO after five and a half years at Woolworths Holdings Limited, where she was Group Head of Communications. Before joining Woolworths, she was the Press Secretary to the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and was responsible for coordinating cross government communications and campaigns. Before that, Susie was at the Department for Work and Pensions, working as part of a team that oversaw wholesale reform of the welfare system. Susie has over 12 years’ international communications and corporate affairs experience spanning markets across Africa and Europe.
“We have an unmatched ability to serve high quality, low cost financial products to customers at scale in emerging markets.
Andrew Watkins-Ball
Andrew started his career as an entrepreneur before joining Salomon Brothers, working in London and New York. After seven wonderful years, he moved back to focus on building businesses within the Technology sector. Andrew’s passion, which ultimately led to him founding JUMO, is to find capital and put it to work to create products, jobs, opportunities and growth. Since 2015, Andrew has been leading JUMO’s mission to enable the world’s unbanked entrepreneurs access to the financial services they need to grow and prosper.
“Everyone should have access to the best financial choices. We’ve built the brain and pipes that hold and carry information for banking systems.
Vasanthi Smedley
Vasanthi has over 18 years’ experience working with international financial services businesses and their investors, guiding them through high-growth, regulatory change and material transactions. Vasanthi is dual qualified in the United Kingdom and Australia and trained at Clayton Utz, a leading Australian law firm.
“Our partners, customers and regulators trust us to deliver the right balance between protection and value proposition in all our territories.
Fábio Matos
Fabio has worked in systems and software development for over 14 years. His tech leadership experience covers e-commerce and banking. He helped build the engineering team for neobank N26, and is building a world-class, compliant and scalable platform for JUMO.
“JUMO has built a strong technology base with new features and functionality constantly on the horizon. We are ready for whatever comes our way.
Joe Mucheru
Joe was the former Kenyan Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of ICT, Innovation and Youth Affairs, appointed by then President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta. He held office from 2015 to 2022. He brings a wealth of government experience and in-depth knowledge of pan-African tech to the JUMO executive team and board. Joe was also previously the head of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for Google, based in Nairobi, serving as Google’s first SSA employee. He joined Google in 2007 where he led the delivery of strategy, business planning and operations and was key to setting up Google’s presence on the continent.
“Organisations like JUMO have never been more important for protecting livelihoods, facilitating financial inclusion, and driving economic growth.