FINCA International - Village Banking

Village Banking

Pioneered by FINCA, village banking is arguably the world’s most widely-imitated microfinance methodology. Among US-based non-profit agencies alone there are at least 31 microfinance institutions (MFIs) that have collectively created over 400 village banking programs in at least 90 countries. And in many of these countries there are host-country MFIs—sometimes dozens—that are village banking practitioners as well.

A village bank is an informal self-help support group of 15-30 members, predominantly female heads-of-household. If the program is “on mission”, in a normal village bank about 50% of all new members entering the program will be severely poor—representing families with a daily per-capita expenditure (DPCE) of less than US$1; the rest are moderately poor (DPCE=$1–2/day) or non-poor (DPCE >$2). These women meet once a week to avail themselves of working capital loans, a safe place to save, skill training, mentoring, and motivation. Loans can be as small as $50–$100 and are linked to savings such that the more a client saves the more she can borrow. The normal loan period is four months and is repaid in 16 weekly installments.

As with many other microcredit methodologies, village banking eliminates collateral (the poor man's obstacle to receiving commercial bank loans) as a loan prerequisite. Instead, it relies on on a system of cross-guarantees, where each member of a village bank ensures the loan of every other member. This system gives rise to an atmosphere of social pressure within the village bank, where the cost of social embarrassment motivates bank members to repay their loans in full. The admixture of cross-guarantees and social pressure makes it possible for even the poorest people to receive loans. This method has proven very effective for FINCA, yielding a repayment rate of over 97% in its worldwide network.

Market interest rates apply to village bank loans, usually matching what local commercial banks charge their customers but usually only a tiny fraction of the usurious rates charged by local moneylenders. The capital for these loans is provided by FINCA with on-time weekly installment repayments collectively guaranteed by all members—i.e., a shortfall by one member must be covered by other group members. Village banks are highly democratic, self-managed, grassroots organizations. They elect their own leaders, select their own members, create their own bylaws, do their own bookkeeping, manage all funds, disburse and deposit all funds, resolve loan delinquency problems, and levy their own fines on members who come late, miss meetings, or fall behind in their payments.

Worldwide FINCA’s 21 affiliates have about 7,000 staff, of which the majority are field staff (credit officers and supervisors), and may include some of the better-educated children of FINCA clients. Each credit officer (CO) attends the weekly meeting of each of her 10-15 village banks to coach its leadership committee and monitor the bank’s activities. In addition to motivation and adult education, the CO supervises client attendance, monitors bookkeeping accuracy, checks the accuracy of the current week’s loan and savings collections, and checks when the deposit receipt of the previous meeting. In turn, each village bank is managed by its elected officers—a president (who leads the bank’s democratic decision-making process), secretary (who takes attendance and keeps minutes) and a treasurer (responsible for accurately handling all cash transactions). Finally, each village banker has her own passbook, and her recorded balances of loan payments and savings deposits must always be the same as those recorded in the treasurer’s record for each client.