Jakarta. Singapore-based fintech company Gigacover is aiming to protect Indonesia's independent workers with its financial products, the company announced in a media briefing on Thursday.

The demand for protection over independent workers has increased over the past few years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Following its inclining trend, Gigacover aims to provide financial services tailored for independent workers, in a bid to create a fair and financially stable ecosystem for the future of work. 

According to Gigacover Indonesia head Cobysot Avego, more than 60 million self-employed and blue-collar workers (grassroot-level workers) in Indonesia lack access to financial products, such as making loans, having credit cards or taking cash from their wages before payday. 

The target consumers of Gigacover have hazardous jobs and can only rely on the national health insurance scheme BPJS, whereas white collar office workers that do not work in accident-prone environments acquire higher quality insurance, he said.

At the conference, Cobysot reiterated how we should abide by the fifth principle of the official state ideology Pancasila, referring to how the independent workers should also have access to high-quality insurance.

“Social justice for all the people of Indonesia,” Cobysot said.

Gigacover has operations in the Philippines and Indonesia. As of now, the fintech startup has provided more than 30,000 Indonesian workers full access to its financial products.

Being the country with the largest population in the region, Indonesia is home to various kinds of informal independent workers similar to the ones in Singapore. In response, Gigacover along with its Indonesian investors recognized the community that were in need of financial protection and therefore chose to broaden their services here.

The gig economy is also on the rise with the new generation seeking work flexibility, thus opening doors for Gigacover to flourish in this modern age.

“The new generation of people, much younger than me, want to be their own bosses and have their own freedom,” Gigacover co-founder and chief executive officer Amerson Lin said.

Gigacover is implementing a business-to-business-to-worker (B-B-W) model to attract more users into their platform.

“[For example,] a company wants to sign up 80% of their workers for the Gigacover financial products. The company’s intentions are so that the workers cannot make excuses to skip work for electricity outages or going to a relatives house to borrow money,” Amerson and Cobysot said. 

This increases the work productivity in that specific company and also the workers, hence the B-B-W model.