Herpin Jateng, Acting Chief of Party for the USAID Cooperative Development Program (CDP)/World Council of Credit Unions' (WOCCU) Technology and Innovation for Financial Inclusion (TIFI) Project, is the featured guest on Episode 27 of The Global Credit Union Podcast. Jateng discusses how the TIFI Project has worked to grow small-and-medium enterprise (SME) lending efforts at credit unions in three African countries: Kenya, Burkina Faso and Senegal through implementation of WOCCU's SME Finance Toolkit, which is designed to:
- Reduce lending risk by credit unions to SMEs, who often do not have formal or documented credit histories and who may not be able to provide the same types of documentation and collateral that are required for more traditional loans.
- Streamline and simplify the SME lending process, thereby reducing costs of lending to SMEs.
- Increase the number and quality of financial products available to SMEs, thereby increasing SME financial inclusion.
Jateng also discusses how the TIFI Project is working with fintechs to increase the number of digital options available for SME lending.
You can find past episodes of The Global Credit Union Podcast by clicking here. To suggest a topic or guest for a future episode, contact Greg Neumann, World Council Director of Communications, at gneumann@woccu.org.
