On the ground, ACCESS incubates emerging MFIs and builds their capacity to help them upscale their operations, enhance their services and meet the growing demand for financial services from the poor.
The technical support to the MFIs starts with the administration of the Institutional and Capacity Assessment Tool (I-CAT). I-CAT is an in-house assessment tool which analyses the organisation based on eight parameters, namely Governance, Management Practices, Human Resources, Financial Management, Microfinance Services, MF Programme Performance, External Relations and Disaster Risk Management.
The identification of the weak areas of the MFIs is followed by the formulation of the Business Development Plan (BDP). This includes the strategic as well the operational plan for the next three to five years covering various aspects like number of groups/members, number and value of loans, amount of outstanding portfolio, interest earnings, operational costs, financial costs, amount to be mobilised from internal sources, amount mobilised from external debt, equity and soft-funding and key financial and performance ratios. The subsequent technical assistance provided to the MFI in view of the identified gaps covers the following areas:
Operational Organisation
- Perspective and vision building
- Legal issues
- Product development / designing of services
- Organisational structure
- Business plan development
- Monitoring systems and policies
- Monitoring forms and formats
- Trouble shooting
- Management Information Systems (MIS)
- Group management and systems
- Leadership training / strengthening governance
Portfolio Management
- Client profiling
- SHG rating / grading
- Training on mF concepts and SHG management
- Delinquency management
Financial Management
- Credit / lending systems and policies
- Loan appraisal process
- Financial systems and policies
- External linkages for funds
- Financial planning and projections
Field & Practices
- Training on operational manual
- Exposure visits
