Osome & Aspire expand partnership to streamline SME finances
Osome and Aspire have announced an expanded partnership aimed at reducing the financial administration workload for entrepreneurs, startups, and small and medium-sized enterprises in Singapore and Hong Kong.
The collaboration makes Aspire's bank integration accessible through Osome's AI-powered platform, allowing businesses to automate finance workflows and devote more of their resources to higher-value activities. The integration specifically targets the weekly time founders and finance staff spend reconciling accounts and extracting data from multiple bank statements.
According to Osome and Aspire, traditional reconciliation processes require significant manual processing, including downloading and matching bank statement transactions, leading to a cumulative loss of up to six hours per week. By bringing automation to these steps, the new integration enables businesses to extract data directly from bank accounts into Osome's system, streamlining and simplifying reconciliation. This, the companies say, results in a marked reduction in human error and enables faster closing of financial books.
"Osome exists to give entrepreneurs back what matters most - their time," said Catherine Doherty, Head of Partnerships at Osome. "Our partnership with Aspire reflects our commitment to simplifying business ownership and helping founders build something meaningful."
Osome's analysis indicates that improvements in financial administration, including automation, can lead to cost reductions ranging from 35% to 46%. The company has observed a sharp increase in the adoption of bank feed integration among its clients in recent months. In the two months prior to the announcement, usage surged by 43% among Osome's customer base. Both companies interpret this uptick as clear evidence of demand for more efficient, automated financial processes.
"A 43% surge in adoption in just two months speaks volumes," said Andrea Baronchelli, CEO and Co-Founder of Aspire. "Founders are hungry for solutions that save time and reduce friction. Our integration with Osome gives them real-time visibility, faster reconciliation, and fewer manual headaches."
Both Osome and Aspire plan to extend their support for the business community. This includes joint educational and outreach activities designed to help founders, startups and SMEs in Singapore and Hong Kong better understand and implement technology-driven solutions for their accounting and finance operations.
Business impact
The partnership is intended to address long-standing challenges faced by SMEs around financial management, a pain point that often diverts leaders' attention from core business functions. By shifting reconciliation and admin processes away from manual to digital, Osome and Aspire aim to contribute to improved efficiency and accuracy for their users.
Osome focuses on supporting SMEs with digital services such as incorporation, secretarial support, accounting, payroll and tax compliance. Having processed more than 1 million bookkeeping transactions collectively valued at more than USD $5.6 billion, Osome remains active in financial hubs including Hong Kong, Singapore and London.
Aspire's finance platform, meanwhile, is used by more than 50,000 companies globally for international payments, treasury, expenses, and receivable management. The Singapore-headquartered business, which employs more than 600 staff in nine countries and serves clients in over 30 markets, closed a USD $100 million Series C investment round in 2023, reaching profitability last year.
Looking ahead
With both companies committed to further collaboration, upcoming initiatives will seek to provide founders in Singapore and Hong Kong with tools and resources to reduce administrative burdens and allow them to focus more on strategic priorities. The expanded partnership marks another move towards the adoption of technology designed to streamline standard business functions in regional startup ecosystems.
