Tackling the Challenges of Offering Voluntary Savings to the Poor

Leo Tobias is Grameen Foundation’s Technology Program Manager of the Solutions for the Poorest Microsavings Initiative.

Offering savings programs for the poor can be challenging. First, the microfinance institutions (MFIs) that want to offer these services are competing with a variety of alternatives, such as home-based savings (under mattresses, in strongboxes, etc.), or keeping money with relatives or neighbors. Second, offering savings products fundamentally changes the relationship between the MFI and its customers.  When clients only want loans, making that the primary purpose for their interactions with the MFI, there is a standard process. Taking voluntary customer deposits radically changes that relationship, to one that is initiated by the customer and that involves varying amounts of deposits or withdrawals. In other words, the customer interaction is less predictable.  At any time of the day or night, the customer can ask for her balance and withdraw from it.

A loan officer from CASHPOR in India processes loan payments on her mobile phone.

Grameen Foundation’s Microsavings team has found that poor customers all want to have easy and convenient access to their funds.  The MFIs we work with face common technology challenges involved with providing such access.

In this post on the CGAP Technology Blog, Leo Tobias, our technology program manager for the Grameen Foundation Microsavings Initiative, discusses two of the major technology challenges facing MFIs.

The Value of Group Savings and Lending to the Poorest People

This is a guest post from Sudarshan Behera, Field Executive for our Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest project in Gaya, India.

Sugia Devi was a changed woman on November 7, 2011. She had just left the free cataract clinic in Bodhgaya in India’s northern state of Bihar and was grateful for her improved eyesight. She couldn’t wait to thank the people who had made it possible: the members of her adapted self-help group (ASHG).

Sugia Devi and her husband.

The group is part of Livelihood Pathways for the Poorest, a joint project of Grameen Foundation’s Solutions for the Poorest group and BASIX/The Livelihood School that is designed to enhance the skills of the ultra-poor, link them to income-generating activities and build their savings habits.

Sugia lives in Khaneta village with her husband and her son, and his family. When she first heard about the ASHG in August, her husband did not want her to join the program because of mistrust and a lack of understanding about the benefits of participation. She persisted and began attending meetings and saving a small amount each week. Starting with an initial deposit of 10 rupees (about 2 cents), by November she had saved 130 rupees (about $2.40). But it still wasn’t enough to pay her fare to get to the free clinic in Bodhgaya some 30 kilometres (19 miles) away.

That’s when Sugia turned to the members of her ASHG. In addition to providing a safe place to save, the groups also provide its members with quick access to short-term loans. Sugia’s group members approved her loan of 100 rupees, enabling her to cover her transportation costs for her operation.

Today, Sugia’s husband has a better appreciation for the value of the self-help groups, while she knows that her family can rely on the group when they need help. As her husband noted, before the ASHG, the family would have had to borrow from moneylenders who typically don’t lend less than 500 rupees (about $9), at very high interest rates.

Sugia has recovered from her operation, and now Friday – the day her ASHG meets – has a special importance in her life.

Grameen-Jameel Is Strengthening Microfinance in the Middle East

Alex Counts is president, CEO and founder of Grameen Foundation, and author of several books, including Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World.

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the historic city of Istanbul for the first time, on the occasion of the first Grameen-Jameel (GJ) partners meeting, followed by a two-day meeting of GJ’s Board of Directors, on which I serve.  GJ is a joint venture launched five years ago between Grameen Foundation and the Jeddah-based Abdul Latif Jameel Group to advance microfinance and poverty reduction in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and now Turkey as well.  (Peter Bladin and Jim Greenberg are the other two Grameen Foundation representatives on the GJ Board, while Fady Jameel is one of the two Jameel Group appointees, in addition to chairman Zaher Al Munajjed.)

The partners meeting was elevated by the presence of not just representatives of 13 of the 15 GJ’s partner microfinance institutions (MFIs), but by Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus.  (The only MFIs that did not join were one from Egypt and one from Syria, the latter due to the inability to get a visa, because Turkey has closed its embassy there.)

Prof. Muhammad Yunus speaks to the crowd at the Grameen-Jameel partner meeting, held in Istanbul.

The first day of the meeting consisted of an excellent overview by its General Manager, Julia Assaad, of GJ’s accomplishments.  She announced that GJ had surpassed its goal of reaching 1 million poor families with microfinance through its partner MFIs to date, and had in fact crossed the 1.5-million mark in September.  Representatives of five of the partners – the Turkey Grameen Microcredit Program (TGMP)in Turkey, Enda Inter-Arabe in Tunisia, DBACD in Egypt, Tamweelcom in Jordan and FONDEP in Morocco – spoke about their journey of starting and growing their organizations, and how GJ was able to help them in critical ways.