My Day at a Mickey Mouse-Bank
Today, I had my exposure to a financial institution, which offers microfinance services. I was happily surprised when I saw the desk of the CEO. He had more technical toys on his desk than me (HP iPaq, Nokia Communicator, Nokia cell phone, Toshiba laptop) and also the other computers looked pretty new (all with flat screens).
But then the show begon. If it were not an onsite examination, I would have laughed the whole day. It was just too funny what they did and told us.
Well, what made me laugh first was the CEO's statement that group lending should not be done in Africa, because the underlying assumptions would not hold in Africa. This could be interpreted as "Africans show no social responsibility and are selfish".
Actually, I wanted to cite some other funny things but I just realised that this might not be advisable because someone might find out which institution I visited today.
By the way, my CEO came up with the expression Mickey Mouse-Banks for microfinance institutions. I like it and I must stress, that I do no marginalise the services rendered by those institutions. In fact, I think they are as important as "usual" banks and since they conduct financial intermediation they should be regulated and supervised.
What most microfinance experts could not explain to me is the big difference of microfinance from "usual" banking? It is mass lending of small amounts with an emphasis on personal relationship management to enforce repayments in time. So what?
But then the show begon. If it were not an onsite examination, I would have laughed the whole day. It was just too funny what they did and told us.
Well, what made me laugh first was the CEO's statement that group lending should not be done in Africa, because the underlying assumptions would not hold in Africa. This could be interpreted as "Africans show no social responsibility and are selfish".
Actually, I wanted to cite some other funny things but I just realised that this might not be advisable because someone might find out which institution I visited today.
By the way, my CEO came up with the expression Mickey Mouse-Banks for microfinance institutions. I like it and I must stress, that I do no marginalise the services rendered by those institutions. In fact, I think they are as important as "usual" banks and since they conduct financial intermediation they should be regulated and supervised.
What most microfinance experts could not explain to me is the big difference of microfinance from "usual" banking? It is mass lending of small amounts with an emphasis on personal relationship management to enforce repayments in time. So what?
posted by Torsten at 6:36 pm
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