Advance Tech targets ‘regularized’ workers for salary loans

Advance Tech Lending Inc., a cash advance facility catering to regular employee, formally launched on Monday its lending operations, targeting the regular employees of partner companies.

At this point, the company is offering its services only to regular employees to ensure proper repayment.

“We only lend to regularized employees to ensure that there is enough security,” Advance Tech co-founder and CEO Jaime de los Angeles said in a press conference in Makati City on Monday.

In the long-run, the company is looking at launching other services for contractual employees. Advance Tech started operating in the country in October 2008.

The company caters to half a million employees across the country since it started in October 2018.

“We have partnered with some of the biggest payroll providers in the Philippines. That gives us access to about 300,000 to 500,000 employees,” said Advance Tech co-founder and CFO Addi Guevara at the same press conference.

From P1,000 up to 50% of their monthly salary, employees employees to secure cash advances and be credited immediately to their payroll account.

While it does not charge any interest, Advance Tech said it charges a 3.5% processing fee for each transaction. Payments are made mainly through salary deductions, with repayment option of 15 days or installments within two months.

“It acts very much like a credit card for times when employees need quick cash,” Angeles noted.

The service is mainly web-based through www.advance.ph, but the company plans to release a mobile app by the fourth quarter of the year to boost its lending operations.

“We are on track to break our full-year target of P100 M in terms of loans disbursed. We’re about halfway there as of now, but we’re ramping up this month,” De los Angeles noted.

For its lending operations, Advance Tech has secured institutional funding from the Philippine National Bank and Asia United Bank. —VDS, GMA News