Fresh from its investment in US marketplace lender Kabbage, Dutch bank ING has taken a stake in WeLab, a non-bank provider of consumer loans in China and Hong Kong. ING participated in a Series B $160 million (RMB1 billion) fundraising in the three-year old online marketplace alongside Malaysian Government fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad and China's state-owned Guangdong Technology Financial Group (GTFG). The new round of funding follows the completion of a $20 million Series A round in January 2015 from a group of strategic and financial investors, including CK Hutchison’s TOM Group and Sequoia Capital, which enabled WeLab to launch new products in mainland China and solidify its credit risk modelling capabilities. Despite a backdrop of increasing economic uncertainty, the company saw loan disbursements increasing ten-fold among its 2.5 million customer base in 2015, sourcing RMB9 billion in loan applications.

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