Improving financial inclusion in Jordan through Impact Measurement and Management
A client of National Microfinance Bank in Jordan. The bank is providing financial service solutions across the country to more than 90,000 clients.
National Microfinance Bank (NMB) is a microfinance institution, authorized by the Central Bank of Jordan to provide financial services to more than 90,000 clients across Jordan. The bank provides financial inclusion solutions and other non-financial services to established and developing MSMEs. It operates with a mission to improve livelihoods and socially and economically empower those excluded from conventional commercial and banking services. The bank focuses mainly on the education and agriculture sectors, with loans rendered ranging from USD 300 to USD 70,000.
As part of a partnership between the Arab Gulf Fund Development Programme (AGFUND) and BCtA, NMB partnered with Business Call to Action (BCtA) to receive training courses and mentorship through BCtA’s Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) service. The partnership aims to support and train 2,000 SMEs in impact management via a train-the-trainers model, delivered through state-based microfinance institutions.
BCtA sat down with Rami Nasraween, Chief Operating Officer at NMB to gain some insights on the impact of IMM training on the organization and its stakeholders.
How has IMM training benefitted NMB internally?
After attending the training and understanding the great benefits of adopting IMM in our operations, we will be considering our impact on different processes; especially through data collection, engaging with our stakeholders and the repayment process of our loans. This should provide enough data that can better help us increase financial inclusion by providing client-centric financial solutions, which will improve lives and enhance performance.
Recently, we collected additional data about our existing product offerings, especially for one of our newly introduced products ‘Bithar’ which means seeds in Arabic. Bithar is a specific loan product targeting small farmers in rural areas, who run microbusinesses in the areas of poultry, livestock, or food processing activities. This product has a flexible payment frequency designed to help farmers during periods of low yields.
Gathering such information shed light on what needs to be done to help farmers enhance their living standards. It also illustrated to us the difficulties farmers are facing in their existing supply chains, something we will focus on through designing additional services and solutions that can assist small farmers with supply chain challenges. One solution is to bring NMB clients together to grant them much-needed, and increased, access to markets.
What were the main challenges faced during the process of implementing IMM at NMB and how did you overcome them?
This IMM project can best be described as challenging, yet rewarding. In the beginning we faced difficulty onboarding staff as the concept was relatively new to the country and in the industry of microfinance.
Therefore, engaging employees in several training sessions to understand the real concept and benefits of IMM has led to exciting discussions to try and diagnose the many social problems we face in our region and what could be the solutions for the clients’ problems that they deal with on a daily basis.
Dedicating enough resources and choosing the right staff to work on this project was another challenge the head office had to face.
In addition, it was not easy to attract the attention of clients as many MSMEs were struggling to survive in the pandemic with many seeing plummeting sales, reduced working hours due to governmental orders and many sectors closed.
Hence, the training clients received had to be a short version of our staff training that educated them on the IMM concept and approach as well as to explain the impact value chains and what it represents. It helped them greatly to focus on identifying the problems they faced and what steps needed to be taken by either NMB or themselves to defy these challenges.
Finally, and as we started seeing the positive impact of these courses on our clients, we integrated this training as a pre-requisite for the client before receiving the loan.
What was the impact of the IMM training on your clients?
The training our clients received greatly impacted their perspective; they realized that making articulated, well-thought business decisions not only helps their businesses, it can also help people around them through serving the Sustainable Development Goals.
For example, one client that owns a kindergarten received the training and decided to increase the capacity of her business by expanding the current space. This was a pure business decision that not only helped provide a better education for the children with a healthier environment due to increased space allocated for each child, it also generates increased job opportunities. The client stated that through the IMM training she made this decision with the full confidence that she would be successful.
About NMB: NMB is a Jordanian MFI registered as a private shareholding company and Licensed by the Central Bank of Jordan to provide financial service for the targeted segments according to the best international practices in the microfinance industry. NMB provides its services to more than 90,000 active clients through a network of 34 branches all over the kingdom. NMB’s vision is to be an organization that employs financial inclusion to provide optimal solutions to its clients towards a permanent improvement to their livelihood.