Fina Fund targets SAR 500 million for Saudi SMEs

The Fina Fund has been launched in Riyadh as a direct financing vehicle targeting SAR 500 million to provide liquidity to small and medium enterprises across Saudi Arabia. It is the work of Fina, the B2B embedded finance business of SILQ, in partnership with Joa Capital, an established Riyadh-based alternative asset manager that will manage the fund. One detail matters before anything else. SAR 500 million, roughly USD 133 million, is the fund's target size rather than an amount raised or committed. The Fina Fund is a private, closed-ended direct financing investment fund established under the Investment Funds Regulations and licensed by the Saudi Capital Market Authority to provide corporate finance solutions to the wider B2B ecosystem. Units are offered only by private placement to investors meeting eligibility criteria, not to the public. The financing itself is designed to sit inside business workflows rather than beside them. Capital will be deployed across procurement, supplier payments, receivables and similar day-to-day activities, subject to eligibility criteria and applicable terms, which means a merchant accesses liquidity at the point of transacting instead of applying through a separate credit process. The gap being targeted is well documented. SME financing accounted for 11.3 per cent of total bank loans in 2025, against the Kingdom's 20 per cent target for 2030, with the financing shortfall estimated at around SAR 400 billion. Numbers like these are often read as a capital supply problem, but the more instructive reading is about mechanism. Gulf lending has historically been collateral-heavy and balance-sheet-driven, which suits established corporates and systematically disadvantages younger businesses whose most valuable asset is their transaction history rather than property. Routing credit through a CMA-licensed fund that underwrites against commercial activity is an attempt to change the instrument, not just increase the volume, and that distinction is what makes this worth watching beyond the headline figure. Fina's approach grew out of operating experience rather than a financial thesis. The company's Saudi journey began with Sary, a wholesale marketplace focused on how merchants source and purchase inventory, and liquidity surfaced repeatedly as the constraint holding those merchants back. After Sary merged with South Asia's ShopUp to form SILQ in 2025, Fina was built as a dedicated embedded financing arm. The SILQ ecosystem in Saudi Arabia has supported more than 50,000 businesses and enabled over SAR 20 billion in total transaction volume. Fina deployed SAR 1.5 billion in financing over the preceding twelve months and has been targeting SAR 3 billion in liquidity for more than 2,000 businesses this year, supported in part by a USD 75 million Shariah-compliant facility secured from Fasanara Capital in July 2026. The fund is a further step in that direction, though its progress toward the SAR 500 million target remains to be seen.