{"id":6767,"date":"2019-08-27T08:04:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-27T08:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/?p=6767"},"modified":"2019-08-27T08:04:31","modified_gmt":"2019-08-27T08:04:31","slug":"u-microfinance-bank-launches-its-first-impact-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/2019\/08\/27\/u-microfinance-bank-launches-its-first-impact-assessment\/","title":{"rendered":"U Microfinance Bank Launches its First Impact Assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>U Microfinance Bank launched its flagship<strong><em>\nImpact Measurement &amp; Baseline<\/em><\/strong> report today in an event hosted in\nIslamabad. The guests included executives from various microfinance, research\nand international institutions who all came together to discuss the challenges\nand opportunities in measuring social impact within the Pakistani microfinance\nsector. This first-of-its-kind report in the Pakistani ecosystem, is a concrete\nstep forward by U Bank to gather and open-up more customer side data and\ninsights and ensure better product and service design with the aim of improving\nthe sectors social impact outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The report comes at an opportune time\nwhen the global microfinance industry is grappling with the key question of its\nability to deliver on its dual promise of social and economic performance.\nWhile recent research has put the core assumption of the sector, that it lifts\npeople out of poverty, under increasing scrutiny with evidence contrary to that\nbelief remains in agreement that it is still a major part of the equation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The report looks at data across\nfive main categories of impact \u2013 household, livelihood, health and nutrition,\nbusiness and the bank\u2019s product and service quality. The first report, which\nwill be a biennial effort, establishes a baseline of where U Bank\u2019s customers\nare currently against these metrics and analyzes their perceptions about the\nimpact that the microfinance loans have had on their lives and livelihood. The\nmethodology used is a blended approach \u2013 combining elements of experimental and\nAcumen\u2019s lean data approaches \u2013 to put forth a new way of measuring impact from\nthe costly and time and labor intensive RCTs that have been traditionally been\nfavored to assess impact. In line with global research, our data shows that\nmicrofinance plays a key role in helping our customers overcome shocks such as\nillness, death, crop failures and natural disasters. Furthermore, one of the\nbiggest values our customer attribute towards the loan is the resulting gains\nin quality of life and how it helps smooth household consumption. 75% of the\nrespondents indicated that the loan has led to a positive impact on their\nbusiness income and a majority of them agreed that the loan was critical for\nthe health and quality of their businesses. The report also digs deeper into\nthe data-set and combines it with qualitative information collected via focus\ngroup, to provide a fresh and in-depth analysis of microfinance customers and\npulls out some very interesting insights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For instance, new analysis from the report shows that: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>While 90% of the respondents saved a portion of\ntheir income, only 3% of them save formally. Furthermore, contrary to previous\nresearch which indicates that women borrowers are more likely to save only 25%\nof our female customers are engaged in saving behavior compared to 75% of male\nrespondents. <\/li><li>Male respondents were also much more likely to\nincrease their asset ownership post-loan, as compared to female customers. <\/li><li>Customers with children in school and those who\nhave undergone some form of medical treatment in the last 6 months, keeping\nother factors constant, tend to perceive that the quality and standard of their\nlives has improved as a result of the loan. 20% of respondents also believed\nthat the loan had played an integral role in helping their children access\nbetter health care facilities and another 16% said they were able to access\nbetter medical treatment facilities.<\/li><li>Financial literacy training and management\nadvice remains a critical need, especially for women customers who have limited\ncommercial exposure. A majority of the female customers identified that more\nguidance and hand holding in these areas would make the overall service even\nbetter for them. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Launching the report U Bank\u2019s President\nand CEO, Kabeer Naqvi said, \u201cBeing a triple bottom line company focused on\npeople, planet and profits, U Bank is on a continuous mission of\nself-reflection and relearning to improve our product and services and the\nlives of those we serve. This report is a manifestation of that value and our\ncommitment to doing things right. We hope that many other\u2019s from the ecosystem\nwill join us in opening-up even more data about the ecosystem so that the\nentire ecosystem can move forward.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While macro-level data points on\nthe microfinance sector have been collected and reported regularly, there has\nbeen a dearth of micro-level, customer side data (publically available) in\nPakistan. U Bank\u2019s report makes this kind of data public within sector for the\nfirst-time. The event was attended by leaders and senior managements of a\nnumber of other microfinance institutions, think thanks, international\norganizations and academia. The report\u2019s findings and recommendations where\npresented to the audience, following by an open discussion on the results and\nthe gaps and challenges of replicating such an exercise across the sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of their research and\ninnovation ambitions, Mr. Naqvi shared that the research will be repeated by\nthe bank biennially and that he hoped to continue conversations around\ndeveloping a localized social impact scorecard for customer-side data for\nadoption across the microfinance space in Pakistan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U Microfinance Bank launched its flagship Impact Measurement &amp; Baseline report today in an event hosted in Islamabad. The guests included executives from various microfinance, research and international institutions who all came together to&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6769,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6767\/revisions\/6769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitaldips.pk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}