Changing Internal Culture to Smooth the Transition from Pure Lending to Savings

Changing staff culture in order to effectively promote new products at a microfinance institution (MFI) can be nearly as challenging as getting customers to embrace the products but the OPTIX project helped one MFI in Vietnam address its marketing problems by connecting it with a peer in Bangladesh that had overcome this hurdle.

The Capital Aid Fund for Employment of the Poor (CEP) was founded in Vietnam in 1991 as an unregulated nonprofit organization to offer credit to people on low incomes in the Mekong region of Vietnam. Over 27 years of operations, CEP had established a strong, credit-focused identity, which drove admirable results for its clients and for the institution.

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‘Stealthy’ Saving: Building on Payroll Credit to Automate Savings

Basic savings accounts are essential to helping people build assets, and they’re often the first step in building a relationship with customers.

This is something Acreimex—a savings & credit cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico, serving over 120,000 members (as the cooperative refers to its customers) across eight states through its network of 45 branches—understands very well.  Although they are a savings-based institution, some of their customers find it difficult to save. The cooperative has worked with BFA since 2016 to improve the profitability, relevance and accessibility of its product portfolio – and part of these efforts have focused on finding a way to introduce savings to its existing payroll loan customers.

Acreimex’s payroll credit product, Acreinómina (nómina means payroll in Spanish), is offered to employees in over 400 public and private institutions, and is currently the cooperative’s most profitable loan product. These same customers, however, tend to lack awareness of Ahorramás y Más (A++), the cooperative’s flagship savings product which all customers have, but not all use. To increase use of A++ accounts by Acreinómina customers, Acreimex and BFA built on the success of this specific loan product, automating savings alongside the payroll credit payments to drive uptake and usage.

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