A Jump Finance Case Study

In 2020 many students at University of The Gambia (UTG) struggled to make tuition payments.

With no financial option, students faced high up front tuition payments which led many to defer or entirely quit their studies, limiting their potential. This led to a lower graduation rate and loss of revenue for UTG.

Jump Finance partnered with UTG to help solve these problems.

Working with the UTG finance department, Jump Finance designed a customizable tuition plan for students that balanced flexibility for students and risk mitigation for University of The Gambia.

Jump Finance provides its student customers with a student portal where students can track their payments, and find resources for studying and labor market opportunities in our E-Library.

We provide UTG with a data dashboard where they can visualize student’s repayment rate (90%+). We are currently planning an integration with their course registration software so that students that are up to date with installment plans are automatically eligible for enrollment.

4 years later, 300+ students have taken advantage of Jump Finance.

As our 300+ student customers can attest, having the option for financial installment plans makes a massive impact to their lives and helps them alleviate stress around studying. Over 20 of our students have already graduated and continue to make repayments. You can read our students’ stories here and watch a video here.

Further, our service drives efficiency in the finance department by helping track payments and providing finance officers with an option for their struggling students when scholarships are unavailable or underfunded.

We are proud to continue into our fourth year of partnership and look forward to years to come serving both the administration and students of University of The Gambia!

“Jump Finance is an excellent partner to work with and is a savior to our students”

-UTG Finance Department

Jump Finance expands to 100 students and its second university!

Jump Finance celebrates 100 students

We are thrilled to announce that we grew to support more than 100 students in 2022 — 110 to be exact. That's more than a threefold increase from 2021.

We achieved this goal by strengthening our educational partnerships (more on one of those efforts below), increasing the efficiency of our technology, and most of all, through incredible teamwork.

We'd like to give an especially big thanks to our on-the-ground student support managers, Mafugi Bah. Mafugi began as a Jump Finance student in 2020. After seeing the benefits of the program firsthand, he joined the team. He worked tirelessly to expand our impact across the University of the Gambia, helping to onboard more than 70 new students.

Jump Finance partners with The Gambia College

Therese, a Jump Finance student at Gambia College, with her teacher attestation letter

To grow our impact across The Gambia, we partnered with our second higher education institution: The Gambia College.

The Gambia College is The Gambia’s oldest higher education institution. Founded in 1952 as a teacher training college, it is now the country's main provider of training for teachers, nurses, public health professionals, and agricultural extension officers.

One Gambia College student, Therese used her Jump Finance tuition advance to pay down her arrears and receive her attestation letter. With this letter, she went from being an unqualified teacher to a qualified teacher, doubling her monthly earnings. We could not be more excited to support Therese and more students like her in partnership with The Gambia College.

Looking Ahead at 2023

While we were thrilled with our progress in 2022, we are even more excited about our plans for 2023. These plans include: automating our technology to make signing up and tracking payments easier, developing a software product for universities to provide tuition advances at scale, and most importantly supporting more students achieve their academic and professional dreams.

2021 Highlights

So long 2021, hello 2022! While 2021 was a challenging year in many ways, we’re proud to be able to share three major successes for Jump Finance—and most importantly, our students—over the past year.

1. Jump Finance receives two loans from Austin impact investors

We are trilled to announce the support of Notley Ventures and Austin Impact Capital. Earlier this year, both investors provided Jump Finance with critical loans that have empowered us to vastly expand our pilot program at the University of The Gambia. A huge thank you to both investors—we look forward to continuing our partnership and putting your funds to work for students across The Gambia and beyond!

2. A word from our students

This summer we had the chance to complete a few virtual interviews with our students. In this video, students explain what Jump Finance means to them and what their plans are for the future. Meet Mafugi, Amie and Yaya, the first ever Jump Finance graduate!

3. 2021 recap: 4x the students, new experimental programs, same 100% repayment rate

Thanks to the impact loans we received in the spring, and the incredibly hard work of our team on the ground in The Gambia, we grew from 7 to 33 students! Despite our growing numbers and the continuation of the pandemic, we maintained a 100% repayment rate from all borrowers.

At the same time as we've grown our core student finance offering, we've also experimented with new programs. For instance, this summer we helped two students finance the purchase of laptops. We also held our first ever Jump Finance Student Summit to help students share knowledge and build connections.

To successfully scale our program further we are working to strengthen our technology and even added a few new team members to give us more engineering support—more on this later in 2022!

Meet Albert Loppy: Teacher, Student and Jump Finance’s First Client!

We’ll never forget the day we met our first customer. As entrepreneurs it’s the reason we started our company. We spent countless hours doing market research, building our product and preparing our website, all with the dream of solving a problem many students in developing countries face—lack of educational financing opportunities.

Enter Albert, a student with unlimited determination and a simple problem: despite working as a teacher while studying for his undergraduate degree, he had fallen behind on his tuition payments. With one web form submission, our company quickly transformed from theory to reality.

Albert Loppy is from a family of nine, and is the first in his family to attend university in The Gambia. The Republic of the Gambia is a small country of roughly 2 million people on the west coast of Africa.

Three years ago, Albert began his professional career by taking advantage of a scholarship to become a teacher.  

While Albert enjoyed being a teacher, his dream was to study diplomacy at the University of The Gambia (UTG). To follow his goal, Albert applied to and received admission to UTG. As is the case for many students in his situation, admission and courses would prove to be the easy parts to his education. 

At UTG Albert quickly faced financial difficulties. Yearly tuition costs approximately $720, a nearly impossible sum in a country where a teacher like Albert can expect to earn approximately $680 per year. 

“Heading into his junior year, Albert battled a series of challenges to pay his tuition fee and inevitably fell behind. At this point, his only real option was to defer.”

Without wealth or significant family support, there is simply no way for smart, driven students like Albert to further their education. Heading into his junior year, Albert battled a series of challenges to pay his tuition fee and inevitably fell behind. At this point, his only real option was to defer. 

It was in this situation when Albert learned about Jump Finance and reached out to us on our website. As our first client, Albert successfully completed our screening process, helping us test our technology and providing us with important feedback. In Albert’s words “when Jump Finance provided me with the financial aid necessary to pay my tuition fees, it helped alleviate stressful moments and helped pave a smoother path for me to accomplish my academic goals.”

“Jump Finance provided me with the financial aid necessary to pay my tuition fees, it helped alleviate stressful moments and helped pave a smoother path for me to accomplish my academic goals.
-Albert Loppy”

Free from the burden of constantly worrying about how he would secure future funding, Albert was able to focus on his studies, earning excellent grades in the fall semester. He finished this semester while completing sustainable monthly repayments that will enable him to secure a second loan if he needs it. 

Nearly heading into his senior year, Albert’s plans for the future are characteristically ambitious: “I now have about one year left. After graduating, my intention is to continue to advance my education at the postgraduate level. After this, I hope to serve my nation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Jump Finance plans to support his career efforts with its mentorship and career development support. 

Albert believes that the type of access to credit that Jump Finance offers has the potential to “transform this nation.” As he puts it, “we need to empower the young ones so we can bring this country forward.” We couldn’t agree more, and are proud to support Albert in his educational journey.

Origin Story

As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru, I formed a youth group named JUMP, which stood for “Jóvenes Unidos Motivados por el Progreso” (Young People United and Motivated for Progress). Throughout my two years, the group traveled across Peru, giving preventative healthcare presentations and serving as community leaders.

Visiting a few of the original members of the Jump Youth Group in 2015 in Huaraz, Perú

In the years since completing my service, I’ve watched as some of my most promising students faced financial hardships that stopped them from completing their post-secondary educations.

The goal of Jump Finance is to open up a credit market for these (and millions of other) students in the developing world - to give them the financing, mentorship, and resources they need to unlock their full potential.