Microfinance Adapting To Changing Times

I n the financial year 2016, the Indian microfinance sector finally appeared to have shed the baggage of the 2010 crisis. The sector had faced a significant test of its existence in 2010 when the government of Andhra Pradesh introduced an ordinance that effectively banned collections. In the resulting mayhem, liquidity dried up for the sector, aggregate assets under management (AUM) shrank by nearly 50% and the largest microfinance institutions (MFIs) were forced to seek cover under corporate debt restructuring. Smaller MFIs, those outside of Andhra Pradesh, spent the next few years in crisis mode for want of debt.

In 2016, however, evidence mounted that the shadow was lifting. The Government and the RBI awarded banking licenses to prominent MFIs across the country — a universal banking license to Bandhan and small finance banking licenses to eight MFIs. During the year, equity inflow was significant — and from a much wider variety of investors, debt issuances to mutual funds and insurance companies picked up, indicating in both instances wider acceptability among mainstream investors.

The lending infrastructure had improved as well. Standard KYC, in the form of Aadhaar, was more ubiquitously available. Multiple credit bureaus had come up, improving the quality of data and end-customer assessment. MFIs had adopted technology at the last mile to enable digitisation of data at source, monitoring collection, controlling frauds and reducing turnaround times. Some were experimenting with cashless disbursements and collection models as also with mobile applications that could connect end customers with financial services such as deposits and investment products.

Amazingly, less than 18 months later, the sector has witnessed a fresh crisis. Growth has stalled in this period for NBFC-MFIs. Portfolio at risk is at 12% on an average, the highest since the 2010 crisis. Lenders have become nervous again, some have pulled back fresh exposure entirely. As with any crisis, questions on the viability or sustainability of the model have appeared again.

The last two decades have seen several iterations and changes to corporate structures (culminating in advent of NBFC-MFIs and SFBs), as well as debates around concentration, scalability, and governance. The model itself has seen some tweaks as well — for instance, post the 2012 regulations governing NBFC-MFIs, several MFIs transitioned from a weekly repayment model to a monthly repayment model, ostensibly from the perspective of managing costs better, but perhaps without regard to impact on employee discipline as also higher installment amounts in an increasingly competitive environment that emerged a few years later.

Nevertheless, what is undeniable is that the group-lending model of microfinance, as practised by NBFC-MFIs, has been a resounding success. This is evident from the outreach indicators — MFIs have reached out to more than 5 crore customers in almost all states of the country, covering an overwhelming majority of districts. It is safe to say that barring geographies with difficult terrain, such as the upper reaches of the hilly north-eastern states for instance, MFIs have reached everywhere else in the country. It has not been an easy model to replicate either. Banks for instance, not including the MFIs who transitioned to banks, have not had nearly as much success in using the same model for delivery of credit. And it therefore follows that both NBFC-MFIs as well as the group-lending model of delivery of microfinance are here to stay and thrive as they deserve to.

Based on extensive field coverage spanning several districts at the peak of crisis, we feel that the group-lending model merits a closer look against the very characteristics that make it an operational model.

Core strengths of the group model — observations from the field:

We conclude from the above that commodification of the microfinance product and employee, both of which came about in a bid to manage operating costs and both of which have played a huge factor in the growth of the sector in the years gone by, has in fact now made MFIs more susceptible to shocks.

We believe that it is time microfinance moved towards becoming a credit-lending model. We feel that the sector needs to move on from focusing on access to finance and look towards making this access efficient. In other words, MFIs should expend energy in identifying ways and means to understand the customer better and introducing nuance to the products on offer as well as managing the risk of this unsecured exposure. In doing so, MFIs will fundamentally start creating differentiation in the mind of the customer, which is critical from the perspective of retaining the customer.

Diversification of this nature, in our opinion, will entail the following:

S everal MFIs have, in the past, tried to diversify product offering to their customers using what is commonly known as the “graduation” model. There have been varying degrees of success in managing portfolio quality in such models but very limited success in scaling this product up. We believe that the former is on account of inadequate or poor quality credit underwriting. In turn, this has been on account of the insistence of using the same employees who manage the group-lending model for credit in a bid to save costs. We feel that the lack of scale, in turn, has been on account of insufficient understanding of the client’s ecosystem, again on account of faulty data collection. Equally true is the fact that a substantial number of MFI borrowers use the loan amounts towards consumption and therefore graduating them to an individual loan is not prudent.

The digital approach we’ve outlined enables the lender to take a life-cycle view of the customer and offer different types of products at various points in time in this life-cycle. Therefore, if an MFI understands the customer’s economic ecosystem well, it may take an educated call to fund consumption. But fundamentally, the call should remain that of the MFIs.

There are, of course, challenges, foremost among which are regulations themselves, which prohibit “non-qualifying” assets exceeding a nominal proportion of MFI balance sheets. To remedy this, the regulator will have to take cognisance sooner or later, of the fact that the current regulations have killed innovation in microfinance in every respect except cost rationalisation.

In conclusion, we reiterate that the group-lending model of microfinance has done a phenomenal job in disseminating credit in remote pockets of the country. This is a job that it will continue to have to do. However, MFIs will need to ride the digital wave to understand individual customer better and not lose a customer to the group identity, retain the customer, offer multiple products, and more importantly, insulate their balance sheets from the bogey of event risk.

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