Tag: Mpower

Student loans firm Mpower Financing raises $152.5 million, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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Mpower Financing, which gives education loans to international students, has raised $152.5 million from existing investor Tilden Park Capital Management and investment management firm King Street Capital Management.

The round includes $100 million in equity financing and about $52.5 million in debt financing from both firms, Mpower‘s India general manager Ashwini Kumar told ETtech. Other investors in the round include hedge fund Drakes Landing Associates and private equity fund Pennington Alternative Income Management.

The fresh funding comes nearly six months after the firm raised $30 million from Tilden Park Capital Management and ETS Strategic Capital, the venture capital arm of ETS, a nonprofit educational assessment, research and measurement organisation.

Mpower will use the money to directly support students, and automate and scale its operations, said chief executive Manu Smadja.

“While we do have a line of credit with Community Investment Management, this financing will enable us to directly support students, which means that a lot of the loan production will be retained in-house going forward,” Kumar said.

Part of the proceeds will also be used to grow Mpower’s team in Bengaluru. “We currently have 77 employees in the Bengaluru office, of which close to 45 were hired in 2021 itself. We hope to grow it to at least 200 by the end of next year,” Kumar added.

Started in 2014 by Smadja and Michael Davis, Mpower works with over 370 top universities and colleges across the US and Canada to provide financing to students from over 200 countries.

The company makes its loan decisions based on the domestic and overseas credit data as well as the student’s future earning potential, rather than his or her family’s assets or income. It also helps students build their credit history and provides personal finance education and career support. Since its inception, Mpower said it has received applications for loans worth over $2 billion in total.

India is the largest market for the firm, accounting for about 20% of its overall volume, Kumar said.

“We are excited to partner with Mpower Financing as it operates a truly differentiated business model where it not only lends to students but also offers career guidance and support,” said Chris Gamaitoni, managing director of Tilden Park Capital Management.



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Aditya Birla Health Insurance offers mental well-being cost support

Banking & Finance

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Aditya Birla Health Insurance is offering customers mental health support in terms of counselling and consultation, apart from hospitalisation expenses, under its new comprehensive health insurance policy.

The move comes after the insurer’s experience with a mental health helpline for customers during the Covid-19 lockdown that registered a lot of interest and calls.

Also read: Is mental illness cover worth the money?

“Mental stress levels had gone up during the Covid-19 lockdown. People were at home, income levels in some cases were impacted, or just the pressure of dealing with so many things. So we started a mental helpline for our consumers free of cost. We were expecting not too many people to call because normally there is this taboo around that. But we were positively surprised that so many customers of ours actually use that facility,” said Mayank Bathwal, CEO, Aditya Birla Health Insurance, adding that they then decided to make it a part of the product offerings.

The insurer has recently launched a revamped version of its flagship product, Activ Health, which also offers customers access to mental counselling.

Under the facility, the customer can first call the helpline and talk to a counsellor and if the counsellor assesses that they need more detailed counselling support, then the product provides them that feature and they do not have to pay for it, Bathwal explained.

The insurer has tied up with Mpower, run by Neerja Birla, for counselling support.

“When we talk about mental health, the first thing is counselling support, and not necessarily anything to do with hospitalisation,” he pointed out, adding that the product not just covers mental health from a hospitalisation perspective but also includes mental counselling cost support.

Meanwhile, commenting on the health insurance sector, Bathwal said opportunities for the sector continue.

“It was already a very fast growing category. So my sense is that will continue. Covid has only increased the awareness level for health insurance, because people have realised that something like this can happen to any and everyone,” he said.

Between April and December 2020, Aditya Birla Health Insurance grew by 57 per cent with total gross written premium of ₹859 crore in the period.

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