SAUDI ARABIA IN CROWDFUNDING

In Saudi Arabia, policies and regulations, access to finance, and acquiring talent are among the biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs when starting up a business.

Raising funds is a difficulty that has been faced by entrepreneurs and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) globally. But it is even a greater challenge for Saudi-based entrepreneurs. Startups and SMEs here face immense difficulties securing finance from conventional sources such as bank financing, as well as bearing the burden of debt repayment during the initial stages of their development.

It is one of the main reasons why startups can fail during the consolidation stage. Only 3.2 percent of the Saudi established businesses last for more than three years, according to this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report for Saudi Arabia.

This is evident from the fact that loans to Saudi SMEs, on average, account for less than 2 percent of total bank lending. While startups have even fewer sources of financing with most being dependent on personal resources, family, and friends.

New technology in finance has created the fintech (financial technology) industry: Online businesses and solutions that provide services in a faster, cost-effective and more streamlined manner. Innovative alternative finance, such as peer-to-peer lending (P2P) or crowdfunding, aims to help plug the SME and startup financing gap.

In July 2018, the Capital Market Authority (CMA) announced the approval of the first two trial financial technology licenses to two fintech companies, Scopeer, and Manafa Capital. This qualified the two companies to provide crowdfunding services in the Kingdom as the first results of the Financial Technology Laboratory initiative (FTIL) launched by the CMA at the beginning of 2018.[Courtesy Arab News].