LESS than two years since the launch of its savings application, HelloGold - a Malaysian fintech company, recorded another milestone when it was awarded the World Islamic Fintech Award (WIFA) 2018 as Best Islamic Wealth Management Fintech Company at Manama, Bahrain on Nov 26.
WIFA honors exceptional and deserving fintech providers in the Islamic finance space for their outstanding work in driving Shariah compliant financial services through disruptive and collaborative technologies.
In winning the award, HelloGold’s unique proposition as a provider of a Shariah compliant asset-backed saving solution proved to be its competitive advantage.
HelloGold is a mobile application that allows people to save through gold on a mobile platform.
It is not only the first digital start-up to have its gold product certified Shariah-compliant according to AAOIFI’s Shariah standard on gold, but it also built the world’s first Shariah-compliant gold mobile application.
Chief Executive Officer of HelloGold, Robin Lee said the award from WIFA is a testament to the company’s efforts in democratising asset-based savings and lending products for the underserved and the unbanked in emerging markets, including those in the Islamic world.
“HelloGold uses blockchain technology to enable our customers to access affordable financial products and services starting with gold.”
Co-founded by Robin Lee and Ridwan Abdullah in 2016, HelloGold prides itself in changing the way people save, borrow, and transfer through physical gold, providing the opportunity for any individual to purchase investment grade gold for as low as RM1 (25 US cents), making gold as an attractive, affordable and accessible savings option.
Since the debut of its application in April 2017, HelloGold has won many awards, namely the Most Innovative Islamic Retail Product in 2017 by Islamic Retail Banking; TechMatch ASEAN 2017 and the 2018 Prominent in Wealth, Asset & Investment Management of the Year by Malaysia Fintech Awards.
HelloGold was also nominated by The ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards for the Best Fintech Startup in Malaysia. It has also been selected to be part of SuperCharger Malaysia and D-NEXT Thailand in 2018.
Ita Jalaluddin, the Product Lead of HelloGold, who accepted the award on behalf of the company in Bahrin, attributed this latest achievement to the HelloGold team that has been focused on their mission to make gold savings accessible to everyone and to put customer interest first and foremost in its ongoing product development.
In selecting the winners, WIFA judges looked at many factors, including the ingenuity and quality of service to the nominee’s ability to serve the needs of its customer base.
“At HelloGold, we use technology to make our application as user-friendly as possible so that everyone can start saving in gold in a faster, easier and safer manner. We strongly feel that saving in gold, one of the oldest and most durable assets in the world, should not be an intimidating experience and definitely should not be inaccessible to anyone who would like to explore the gold option to save for their future and to diversify their investment portfolio,” said Ita.
HelloGold now has more than 33,000 Malaysian customers and the company has gone beyond Malaysian shores into new markets such as Thailand, with its gold savings product to be launched there before the end of 2018.
It is also in the midst of venturing into Indonesia and into UAE with further market launches into the Middle East and Africa planned in the near future.
Earlier this year, HelloGold also launched GOLDX, a fully operational Sharia compliant Ethereum ERC20 token representing ownership of fully allocated investment grade gold on blockchain technology.
The fast-moving fintech is now also looking at other asset classes beyond gold to diversify saving options for its growing base of users.
