Evaluating only MoolahSense’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Competition as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: Unit economics.
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FOUNDING
MILESTONE
CRISIS
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Documented cause
MoolahSense was one of Singapore's first MAS-licensed peer-to-peer lending platforms, focused on short-term SME working capital loans between S$50,000 and S$500,000. The platform attracted retail and institutional investors with yields of 8-12% and built a loan book of S$60M by 2017. But P2P lending has a structural anti-selection problem in Singapore: creditworthy SMEs have access to bank financing; MoolahSense's borrowers were those the banks had declined. As the loan book aged, default rates climbed beyond the platform's modeled rates. MAS tightened P2P lending guidelines in 2017-2018, increasing compliance costs. Competing platforms Funding Societies and Capital Match raised significantly more capital and built proprietary risk models that outperformed MoolahSense on default prediction. The platform ceased new loan origination in 2019 and formally shut down in 2020.
Lesson
“Model your P2P SME loan book with the assumption that your best borrowers will graduate to bank credit once they have a repayment history. Your portfolio quality deteriorates by design.”