Stop Talking About the Credit Gap: Indonesia's Fintech Lending Problem Is Now Literacy, Not Access

Ten years ago, the argument for Indonesia's fintech lending industry was access. It was the right argument.

POJK 77/2016, the regulation that created Indonesia's P2P lending framework, turns ten this December. Back then, most Indonesians could not get credit from a bank, and saying so out loud was useful.

The access argument has largely won

SNLIK 2026 puts financial inclusion in Indonesia at 93.61 percent, already past the RPJMN target set for 2029. Financial literacy sits at 69.57 percent. In rural areas the distance is wider: 90.39 percent inclusion against 64.42 percent literacy.

That is a gap of roughly 24 percentage points between people who use financial products and people who understand them.

The industry conversation has not moved with the data

We are still quoting the Rp1,650 trillion credit gap. We are still saying OJK regulation makes it harder to serve the underbanked. Meanwhile fintech lending outstanding reached Rp105.14 trillion in June 2026, growing 25.88 percent year on year. Access is not the binding constraint anymore.

The harder conversation is about what happens after disbursement. Whether the borrower understood the cost before signing. Whether the product was sold to someone who had a realistic chance of repaying it. Whether collection was carried out by people behaving like professionals.

This is not only about pinjol ilegal

Pointing at illegal lenders is convenient, and they deserve every bit of enforcement they get. But there are OJK-licensed P2P lending platforms running tenors so short that rollover is effectively the business model, and licensed platforms whose collection still runs on pressure and shame. Most of us know who they are. The industry has been slow to say it.

Consumer protection is a survival question, not a PR one

This is not a public relations problem. An industry that grows by lending to people who do not understand what they signed will keep producing the cases that invite harder regulation, and will keep losing the trust it needs to raise funding. Financial literacy and consumer protection are not the cost of doing business here. They are the condition for still being in business in 2036.

Access without understanding is not inclusion. It is exposure.

If we spent the next ten years on literacy and consumer protection with the same energy we spent on distribution, what would this industry look like? Get in touch.