Hyemin Lee

EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ Asia-Pacific Class of 2023
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Finda Inc., South Korea

Hyemin Lee is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of the Finda app, a FinTech enterprise focusing on paperless loan brokerage and personal finance management service. Finda was set up in South Korea in 2015 and provides more than 300 loan products from over 60 banks and essential banking services for all bank accounts.

In 2015, Hyemin met Hongmin, who later became the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of the company, in Silicon Valley. They discussed the difficulty of borrowing money from banks. Both of them agreed that the tedious loan procedures could be streamlined into a more transparent and smooth experience. Stemming from this thought of innovating loan processes, Finda was established.

For the first four years, the company faced several obstacles and regulatory difficulties. Finda found a pivotal opportunity in 2019 when the Financial Services Commission (FSC) selected the firm for its first-ever sandbox program. The program allowed selected startups to explore their financial services outside of existing regulations during their test-pilot periods, aiming to foster innovation in the industry. Since then, Finda has been witnessing exceptional growth, with customers expanding to over a million and revenue multiplied by more than 65 times.

Finda received the 2022 Korea Employment and Labor Minister Award and the Minister of SMEs and Startups Award at the Smart Korea Grand Prize.