Consulting Services, Promotion of the Microfinance Sector

Brief description of the Contract:

Strengthening of responsible finance standards within the MFIs addressed by the program, sector wide and within SFD-SMED.

• Holistic assessment of MFIs regarding the adherence to such standards and internationally recognized principles (covering a range of organizational units within MFIs: Products, HR, IT, Risk Management, Marketing, Internal Audit, Management, Branches, Operations, Finance).
• Working towards introducing/strengthening responsible finance principles in the MFIs (e.g. SMART Campaign principles).
• Assess the loan disbursement procedures with comparison with internal controls best practices.
• Assessing the targeting mechanism of MFIs that SFD-SMED uses, also against the use of responsible finance principles.

Monitoring of clients and their needs to inform business decisions

• Design standardized questionnaires (possibly using a digital tool like Kobo Tool[1]Box).
• Visiting clients and assess satisfaction with the service and financing needs.
• Designing a way to measure the impact of loans for a sub-sample of visited clients (probably by means of a before-after analysis).
• Assess issues relating environmental and social safeguards.
• Assess in how far vulnerable groups are reached (women, IDPs, people with disabilities).
• Provide photographic or video evidence.
• Formulating recommendations for the MFIs’ business model.
• Formulating recommendations to SFD-SMED and KfW.
• Social impact topics (benchmarking social returns) based on the client assessment.

Improvement of IT-infrastructure

• Supporting SFD in assessing the needs to improve the IT infrastructure with a focus on software and systems used by MFIs and SFD/SMED (no focus on hardware). Actual programming to be done by SFD-SMED.
• Formulate an analysis report of the systems need.
• IT Audit system flow charts, in order to reflect it on the MFIs.• Support SFD-SMED in formulating an action plan.

Improve the use of data to improve MFIs’ business

• Assessing the current availability of data in the sector and at SFD-SMED.
• Improving the use of data for sector development.
• Training on data analysis / statistical analysis.
• Support the further promotion of the recently developed app for agricultural and small lending. Support the integration of a scoring card into the model (flow charts to reflect on the current apps).

SFD-SMED’s Strategic Plan

• Support SFD-SMED in developing its strategic plan (the plan itself will be developed by SMED).
• Bringing in international expertise.
• Analyzing SMED’s role in the sector overall.

Loan Guarantee Program

• Support SFD-SMED in analyzing the existing data and implementation of the program.
• Support SFD-SMED in evaluating individual and portfolio guarantee models.
• Bringing in international expertise.

Targeting of vulnerable groups and areas

• Carry out a field survey/study on the vulnerable groups (Women, IDPs, Youth, Start-ups and people with special needs).
• Support SFD in developing a strategy to improve targeting of vulnerable groups.
• Formulate an Action Plan.