LOL Interactive Pte Ltd (LOL) launches mortgage platform in Singapore with ambitions to serve Southeast Asia’s growing mortgage demands
SINGAPORE, 3 Jun 2021 – LOL Interactive Pte Ltd (LOL) is pleased to announce its recently launched online mortgage platform with plans to venture beyond Singapore to serve Southeast Asia’s growing mortgage demands. Founded by Erwin Kho in 2018, LOL is a Proptech company specializing in digitizing borrowers’ mortgage experience.
From 2018 to 2020, LOL worked with various customers – from new homebuyers to Proptech companies looking to develop their mortgage capabilities. Before establishing LOL, Erwin was an award-winning banker with over 12 years of industry experience. To date, he has facilitated more than S$ 1 billion worth of property loans and is highly sought after for his insights into the mortgage markets. Commenting on the platform’s launch, Erwin Kho, CEO of LOL, commented: “Notwithstanding that we are in the middle of the COVID pandemic, I see a lot of opportunities, and now is the best time for LOL to grow.
In the immediate term, we will start with the Singapore market. To give you a sense of how well Singapore did in 2020, our research shows that the total number of private property transactions and HDB resales were about 46,000. This represents a large pool of potential clients looking for mortgage loans we can immediately serve.” “I am extremely excited to embark on the next phase of LOL’s growth.
To date, we have been growing organically. Up to this point, most of the growth has been funded by the founders and subsequently from the income generated by the business. However, we are starting to talk to some corporate investors, and I am encouraged by the positive response that I have been getting.”
Regarding how LOL differs from the other mortgage platforms, Kho said: “For the mid-term, we aim to venture abroad. However, rather than offering traditional mortgage products, I see LOL facilitating deals where cryptocurrencies are used to pay for property transactions. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in decentralized finance (DeFi), and one of the possible use cases would be for the transaction of regional properties.” “As we speak, some prop-tech start-ups in the United States are already working with cryptocurrencies for property transactions.
Regardless of how someone feels about cryptocurrencies, I think that asset class will be here to stay, and it will be a matter of time before it is widely accepted. Thus, providing mortgages from some of these DeFi institutions would be something that I envisage LOL could work on when we are ready to go overseas, and that will be an exciting new field to work in.” Moving forward, LOL plans to roll out several outreach initiatives to help stakeholders better understand the Singapore mortgage market and how decentralized finance can positively impact the regional real estate markets.
For more information, please visit www.LoanOnline.sg.
