Asialink Finance Corp., an online lending company, said it has released some P10.5 billion worth of loans in 2022, up 25 percent year-on-year, according to an official. Asialink CEO Robert B. Jordan Jr. said on Tuesday, May 2, that of its 24,000 clients nationwide, majority or 70 percent are micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). “It gave them access to loans at a time when they desperately needed access to funds to keep themselves afloat amid a very challenging environment,” said Jordan in a media statement. The MSME market has become the company’s focus, particularly clients “who need loans using their used vehicles as collateral.” Jordan said Asialink is catering to a “larger share of the market” while its core clients remain the unbanked and underserved sector. The 26-year old company currently has over 800 employees, with “thousands of independent loan consultants and partner dealers” as well as more than 100 branches nationwide. Jordan cites an Asian Development Bank (ADB) data in explaining why the company has been focusing on MSMEs in recent years. Quoting a 2020 ADB data, Jordan said non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), which are supervised by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, has released some $4.9 billion lending to small businesses in the Philippines. He said that by comparison, banks lent $10.3 billion to MSMEs in the same period, representing just 2.4 percent of the industry total loan portfolio. “MSMEs remain underserved by banks,” said Jordan. “The huge gap is being bridged by NBFIs,” adding that the “gap is even more glaring considering MSMEs – which number around 996,000 as of 2020 – make up over 99 per cent of total businesses in the Philippines.” Jordan said NBFI loans to MSMEs in the Philippines were the fourth largest in the region. He noted that “NBFIs allowed MSMEs to weather the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.”