Prodigy Finance raises $500 mn debt from Canadian pension fund

UK-based fintech firm Prodigy Finance on Tuesday announced it has secured USD 500 million debt funding from Canada Pension Plan Investments to finance deserving students for their international education.

The funding deal, led by CPP Investments, through its wholly-owned subsidiary CPPIB Credit Investments Inc, enables Prodigy Finance to expand into a greater number of markets - including key regions such as India, China, South Korea and Singapore, the company said in a statement.

''We are confident that this funding will prove instrumental in transforming the future of numerous deserving students across the Indian subcontinent who otherwise would never have been able to follow their dreams of studying in a top foreign university.

''With the latest round, we aim to disburse USD 1 billion worth of loans to 20,000 Indian students in the next 2-3 years,'' Prodigy Finance India country head Mayank Sharma said in the statement.

The investment for Prodigy Finance comes on top of a USD 250 million debt facility from America's development bank, the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which partners with the private sector to finance solutions to critical challenges facing the developing world today.

These DFC funds will be used to grant loans to postgraduate students with a primary focus on low-income and lower-middle-income countries (minimum 50 per cent) and women (minimum 30 per cent).

Prodigy Finance said that it is offering education loans to Indian students without the need for security, a co-signer or guarantor at more than 800 schools around the world, in the fields of marketing and business administration, engineering, law, public policy and health sciences.

To date, Prodigy Finance claims to have funded over USD 1 billion in graduate education loans, to more than 20,000 high-potential students from over 100 countries.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)