(Bloomberg) — Some of the most active venture capital firms in Latin America are planning to invest more in startups that offer loans and artificial intelligence products, with lower US interest rates potentially opening the door to more initial public offerings as soon as this year after a dry spell in the region.Most Read from Bloomberg Nice Airport, If You Can Get to It: No Subway, No Highway, No Bridge Sin puente y sin metro: el nuevo aeropuerto de Lima es una debacle Citadel to Leave Namesake Chicago Tower as Employees Relocate NYC Sees Pedestrian Traffic Increase in Congestion-Pricing Zone How London’s Taxi Drivers Navigate the City Without GPS Three prominent fund managers interviewed by Bloomberg anticipate there’s much more room for financial-technology lending to run in a volatile region where about 1 in 4 Latin American adults don’t have a bank account and there’s relatively low levels of credit access.“That’s something we’re still very bullish about. Why? Because credit is still extremely underdeveloped in Latin America,” Tomas Roggio, co-founder and general partner at US-based Latitud Ventures, said in an interview. The fund specializes in providing pre-seed money to startups and has about $30 million in assets under management.The venture capital push into Latin America reflects how the region has become a battleground for fintech heavyweights such as Nubank and MercadoLibre, which both saw lending surge 50% or more year-on-year in the third quarter of 2024. As publicly traded companies with a combined market capitalization of approximately $165 billion, they’re the most visible faces of a broader fintech ecosystem that more than quadrupled in number of firms to 3,069 by 2023, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.In particular, the number of fintech lending companies has soared, outpacing all other segments except payments and remittances, according to the IDB report. Venture capital firms like Latitud see the opportunity: About a third of the almost 100 companies that it already backs are startups that directly or indirectly provide credit such as Finkargo and Digitt. Roggio expects credit-related startups will represent at least 40% of about 20 companies Latitud plans to invest in this year.Latitud’s executives also see strong potential in startups developing AI agents — software capable of performing tasks that require interacting with people — because of the potential to boost business productivity and reduce staffing.Felipe Fujiwara, a general partner at US-based Bicycle Capital that raised $440 million in 2023, expects startups that offer financial services will account for a significant share of the 10 to 15 companies the fund plans to invest in through 2028. That’s because financial products in Latin America have some of the highest margins in the world, he said in an interview.Latin American startups faced a challenging fund raising environment over the the last two years due to h
Sab. Feb 8th, 2025
