A global investment firm was evaluating a significant capital commitment into Indonesia's fintech sector. The mandate covered three specific areas: the competitive dynamics between digital payment platforms, the regulatory risk profile of P2P lending under OJK oversight, and the operational viability of neobanking models targeting Indonesia's underbanked population.
The research challenge was significant. Indonesia's fintech industry continues to evolve rapidly in 2025, driven by a maturing ecosystem, ongoing government-led infrastructure modernization, and further regulatory refinement.The pace of change meant that published research from six months prior was materially outdated. New OJK licensing requirements had taken effect. Fee structures between platform operators had shifted. The competitive position of several key players had changed following consolidation activity in 2024.
The investment team had previously attempted to source experts through another provider. The profiles returned were predominantly from fintech executives based in Singapore with regional mandates, rather than practitioners with direct Indonesia-market operational experience. The brief required the latter.
The firm reached out to Konnect with a clear scope: Indonesia-specific practitioners, not regional observers.
Konnect received the brief and immediately separated the research scope into three parallel searches rather than treating it as a single expert mandate.
For the payments and digital wallet segment, the team searched for practitioners with direct operational experience inside Indonesia's major platform ecosystems, covering both product and commercial functions. The focus was on people who had managed merchant acquisition, fee structure negotiation, and QRIS implementation at the operational level.
For P2P lending and OJK regulatory compliance, the team prioritised practitioners who had navigated the 2024 OJK license review process directly. The 2024 license purge eliminated 127 non-compliant lenders, tilting market share toward well-capitalised firms able to meet fresh capital and cybersecurity thresholds.Understanding the practical implications of these changes required practitioners who had lived through them.
For the neobanking and financial inclusion segment, the team sought practitioners with direct experience serving Indonesia's underbanked population outside Java, where the dynamics of agent banking, alternative credit scoring, and digital onboarding are fundamentally different from urban market models.
Within five days of the initial brief, Konnect had engaged practitioners covering all three areas of the research scope.
The expert sessions surfaced intelligence that directly shaped the investment team's assessment across each research area.
Digital payments are now the most popular payment method for e-commerce purchases in Indonesia, led by digital wallets and account-to-account transactions, with platforms like GoPay, OVO, DANA, and ShopeePay dominating the market.Practitioners with direct platform experience provided a ground-level view of how the competitive dynamics between these players were actually evolving: which operators were gaining real merchant penetration versus reported GMV, where fee compression was occurring, and how the super-app bundling strategies of leading players were affecting standalone wallet economics.
The practitioner with direct OJK engagement experience provided the investment team with a precise picture of how the 2024 regulatory changes were being implemented in practice, which segments faced ongoing compliance risk, and what the realistic timeline was for further regulatory tightening in P2P lending. This intelligence was not available in published OJK communications and had not been captured in any analyst report the team had reviewed.
Practitioners who had managed digital financial services rollouts in non-Java markets provided the team with a realistic assessment of unit economics in lower-density markets, the role of agent networks in customer acquisition, and the timeline realism of profitability projections that assumed urban market penetration rates would replicate across the archipelago.
"The difference between what we had read about Indonesia's fintech sector and what we learned from these sessions was significant. The regulatory picture especially. We made a different decision than we would have made without these conversations."
– Senior Investment Manager, Global Investment Firm
The investment firm revised its risk assessment for one of the three segments it was evaluating based directly on the regulatory intelligence surfaced through the expert sessions. The revised assessment led to a change in deal structure that materially reduced downside exposure.
The firm proceeded with its capital commitment on a different basis than it would have without primary research. The expert sessions provided the operational and regulatory granularity that published sources, analyst reports, and the firm's own desk research had not delivered.
For investment teams making consequential decisions about Indonesia's fintech and financial services sector, the gap between published market intelligence and operational reality is wide enough to change decisions. Konnect's approach to Indonesia-specific expert matching, rather than regional generalist sourcing, is what made the difference in this engagement.
Connect with Konnect and get matched with the right specialist within 24 hours.
