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Can digital approaches enable better access to formal financial services to MSMEs?

Posted on by MSC

Experts estimate that the digital credit industry worldwide will be worth more than USD 890 billion by 2024. Users of digital credit around the world appreciate its convenience and immediacy. While digital credit has catalyzed access to finance for the mass market, it has barely begun to meet the needs of MSMEs.

The demand for affordable, relevant, and quality financial services for MSMEs has grown over the past few decades. In 2010, McKinsey estimated that the total unmet need for credit by all formal and informal MSMEs in emerging markets was worth USD 2 trillion. However, a recent study by CGAP estimates that the unmet need for credit among micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in emerging markets is around USD 4.9 trillion. Several factors constrain access to credit for MSMEs. These include the high cost of accessing credit, limited awareness, lack of credit history, and short repayment periods.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further reduced the supply of formal financial services to MSMEs, which currently face a squeeze on credit, have limited access to capital, and face stifled growth. The process of their recovery from the debilitating effects of the pandemic will call for enhanced access to suitable financial services. As per our research, almost one-fifth of entrepreneurs gradually began using digital platforms to sell their products during the pandemic. As the entrepreneurs build their digital footprint and profile, financial service providers have an opportunity to use digital information to assess creditworthiness and offer digital credit facilities.

The chance to use digital approaches to enhance access to finance for the entrepreneurs

Financial institutions have a clear opportunity to enhance access to formal financial services to MSMEs by:

Supporting MSMEs to build digital footprint:

Financial service providers can increase access to finance for entrepreneurs by understanding their footprints better—whether they are digital or potentially digital. As the providers build the footprints of entrepreneurs, it is crucial to assess their readiness and receptivity to transition to a digital future and segment the entrepreneurs accordingly. For example, at MSC, we have learned that providers cannot promote merchant payments through standard “cookie-cutter” solutions. Therefore, we need to look at merchants as distinct personas to decipher their characteristics and explore ways to change their behavior. Our research identified that merchants embody one of four key personas: go-getters, receptive reticent, high-hanging fruits, and easy-catch merchants.

Notably, while MSMEs have some digital presence, most transactions remain in silos. The entrepreneurs themselves are not aware of the data trails they generate and remain in the dark about potential use-cases for data, now or in the future. Moreover, financial institutions cannot utilize the data trails fully to increase financial access. A snapshot of data trails generated by an entrepreneur below illustrates what data could financial institutions digitize to enable better credit assessment.

Lenders and financial institutions can build a nuanced understanding of the status of the digital data footprint of entrepreneurs across different segments and activities. Assessing the digital footprints may include answering questions, such as:

  • What are the digital data streams? Who owns them?
  • What is the availability of data? Is it aggregated or disaggregated? Is it analog or digital?
  • What is the depth and quality of the existing digital data footprints?
  • How can data be aggregated and ownership restored with the entrepreneur?
  • Does the entrepreneur have control over the data to open it to financial institutions and inform credit decisions?
  • How can the entrepreneur use data for better services and services at a better price point?
  • In light of regulations on data privacy, how does a financial institution ensure security and ethical use around ownership, usage, handling, storage, and data transfer?

Once the financial institutions have helped MSMEs enhance their digital footprints, they may use the digital data to develop new business models, innovate risk management approaches, and formulate and implement new products anchored on alternate data.

Building skills and capacities of MSMEs on business management

As discussed in our previous blog, “Digitizing the operations of MSMEs: A big step to strengthen their resilience”, we argue that financial institutions may support enterprises to trust, navigate, and use technology to market their products and services, receive payments, and access digital financial services. Carefully designed and delivered digital skilling programs based on an understanding of their mental models can enable MSMEs to use digital technology to grow their businesses.

Digitizing enterprise finance operations

In our blog, “How can financial institutions use digital transformation to help MSMEs recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic?” we argue that financial institutions may have to use a multi-pronged approach anchored on digitization to support MSMEs as the entrepreneurs revive businesses and build resilience through several avenues. These ways include:

  • Developing a digital business model and digital solutions for MSMEs;
  • Digitizing front-end and back-end processes;
  • Using an omnichannel approach and embed digital channels to distribute financial services to enterprises;
  • Providing superlative user experience using a digital engagement approach.

Developing and implementing adequate digital products for MSMEs

Financial service providers, including FinTechs, have the opportunity to design and implement customized and relevant digital products for MSMEs. Such products may include:

·  Short-term loans with a tenure of a day to a week to help market traders who currently use loans repayable over weeks or a month to finance their business cycles, which run from early morning to afternoon. Mahindra Finance, a non-bank finance company from India has plans to launch digitally-driven small-ticket loans in 2021.

·  Goal-based savings and loans offer a new approach to wealth management that helps an individual plan for a specific life-cycle goal. Such products have an appropriate financial planning tool embedded in the app or USSD interface. Many financial institutions offer goal-based products to their customers. ALAT, Nigeria is Africa’s first fully digital bank launched by Wema Bank. It provides simple, automated saving plans that are goal-based and earns an annual interest of 10%—triple the typical bank rate. Similarly, Equity Bank offers EazzySave to helps customers save toward a goal and often backs it up with a loan.

  • Digital credit for enterprises: Digital credit provides instant, automated, and remote credit to users. Millions of users have benefited from digital credit to meet their consumption needs. While some enterprises use digital credit for their sundry needs, digital credit is seen as a last resort to meet larger working capital needs. Digital credit providers may develop MSME-specific products to on alternate data sources, customized credit-scoring approaches, and aggregating existing and potential digital footprints. We see this in action as in the case of U GRO Capital, a small-business lending platform from India. The platform plans to roll out an end-to-end digital lending platform for the sector and plans to reach out to 500,000 MSME clients.
  • A merchant cash advance (MCA) is a point-of-sale (POS)-based loan product for entrepreneurs offered for a fixed tenure (usually less than 24 months) to meet their working capital needs. Such products enable automatic access to credit as lenders can tap into the entrepreneurs’ cash-flows to use them to help make credit assessments, disburse loans, and collect repayments linked to the sales automatically. The sales-linked repayment allows the entrepreneurs much more flexibility than a regular loan. Bidvest Bank in South Africa offers merchants a loan facility based on the business’s future turnover. It has designed MCA alongside Merchant Capital and catering South African MSMEs. Similarly, Neogrowth in India assesses creditworthiness based on the cash flows through the POS terminals of merchants. It electronically collects loans each day from the sales on the POS terminals, thus addressing issues around seasonality in merchants’ business.
  • Receivables-based, invoice-based, and inventory finance help MSMEs easier access to credit. Like their larger counterparts, micro and small entrepreneurs also buy and sell on credit and maintain stocks and inventory—albeit in analog format. Lenders could help MSMEs digitize sales, cash flows, stock movement, invoices, receivables, and inventory details to assess credit risk and extend credit at a discounted value to the entrepreneurs. The receivables, invoices, and inventory could also act as a psychological guarantee. The increasing use of digital contracting and push from governments toward formal invoicing by enterprises irrespective of their size provides further impetus for this type of finance. Reserve Bank of India, which is India’s central banker, instituted an online bill-discounting platform, the Trade Receivable Discounting System (TReDS). This gave MSMEs the power to raise funds by selling trade receivables from corporates.

How can we help providers and entrepreneurs utilize digital approaches to enhance access to finance for MSMEs?

The market offers a clear opportunity to use digital tools to enhance access to finance, skills, and market linkages for enterprises through a multi-pronged approach at the level of policy and regulation, providers, and entrepreneurs. Such an approach will help resolve the legal, operational, and other barriers for enterprises to access finance, skills, and market linkages. Significantly improving digital financial services design and delivery will require an ecosystem-wide approach to enable entrepreneurs to choose, use, and prefer digital tools and approaches.

MSC plans to build a holistic Enterprise Finance Lab (enFinLab) to:

  1. Support providers develop customer-centric products;
  2. Support enterprises transform digitally;
  3. Build digital platforms to enhance better access to finance, skills, and market linkages; and
  4. Work with policymakers and regulators to build a conducive environment for the growth of enterprises.

We invite investors, donors, and financial institutions interested in partnering with us to get in touch to participate in the enFinLab and enhance access to credit to millions of un(der)served enterprises

The Helix Institute at MSC Masterclass 2 with Leesa Shrader, AgriFin Accelerate Program Director at Mercy Corps

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In our second Master class series, we spoke to Leesa Shrader, the Director of the AgriFin Accelerate Program at Mercy Corps. She is a trailblazer in the financial inclusion space and specifically in the agriculture sector. She spoke at length about her professional journey, key achievements, challenges and lessons learnt and also leaves a few nuggets of wisdom for the future breed of women leaders.

This conversation goes deeper to focus on:

  • The role of agricultural digital platforms in agricultural transformation, and inclusive financial systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. She gave us a walkthrough Digifarm, one of the successful cases of the agriculture digital platforms and lessons learnt in building future platforms
  • Key lessons on partnerships and collaborations emerging from the current digital agriculture platforms
  • The role of youth in agriculture digital ecosystems
  • The medium to long-term impact of COVID-19 on inclusive agriculture finance systems and
  • Recommendations for the players in the agriculture ecosystem

Click here to watch more of our master classes

How can financial institutions use digital transformation to help MSMEs recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Posted on by MSC

The COVID-19 pandemic has left micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) decapitalized. With nowhere to turn for reasonably priced credit to reboot their businesses, many will likely be forced to shut down.

Though MSMEs contribute significantly to the economy and employment, they face severe challenges in access to formal financial services. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated this lack of access.

In May, 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, only 22% of the enterprises that MSC surveyed in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana had managed to access credit from formal financial sources. With the onset of COVID-19, the incomes of MSMEs dropped while their access to credit decreased. Struggling to manage liquidity in the wake of rising household and business expenses, MSMEs continue to dip into their savings.

What are the key constraints that limit the growth of MSMEs?

The illustration below highlights the range of challenges MSMEs face. More than 35% of enterprises rated limited access to financial services as the key constraint that prevents them from growing their businesses.

Several studies on the MSME sector suggest that the multiple growth constraints mentioned above can be linked largely to inadequate access to finance. Lack of access to formal credit from financial institutions forces most entrepreneurs to seek funds from family, friends, and informal lenders. Though easily accessible, informal credit comes at prohibitive costs with interest rates of 3–10% per month.

Why do MSMEs have limited access to formal finance?

The reasons for limited access to formal finance for MSMEs are as follows:

  • Information asymmetry: The inherent nature of MSMEs is the reason behind the demand-supply gap in access to finance. MSMEs are generally informal and young, have less publicly available information, and operate in unfamiliar sectors. This results in higher information asymmetries and risk, which discourages banks from lending to them.
  • Lack of documentation: Most MSMEs do not have enough assets that they can use as collateral. Moreover, financial institutions often require documents, such as certificates of incorporation.
  • Process inefficiencies: Most informal enterprises use manual processes, which are costly and inefficient. Process inefficiencies negatively affect record-keeping, cash flow management, and profit optimizing, and compromise loan appraisal metrics by financial services providers.
  • Limited digital footprints: Since most MSMEs are informal, the entrepreneur’s profile and business transactions are likely unrepresented or underrepresented in the formal financial ecosystem. This leaves the financial institution with limited digital transactional trails to build a credit score and provide customized financial solutions.
  • Perceived as low-return enterprises: Financial institutions do not view MSMEs as a viable target segment compared to large corporate firms. Their perception of MSMEs as high-risk enterprises that offer inadequate returns does not warrant lending to them.
  • Inadequate solutions: Limited information and the perception of low returns of MSMEs affect the development of financial services for this sector. This results in none or limited customization of solutions for MSMEs.
  • Limited reach to MSMEs: In developing markets, many MSMEs are located outside main market areas. This marginalizes them from the reach of formal financial touchpoints.

How can financial institutions use digital transformation approaches to help MSMEs recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Financial institutions have a clear opportunity to enhance access to finance for MSMEs in emerging economies. Financial institutions may use a multi-pronged approach anchored on digitization to support MSMEs, revive businesses, and build resilience. This will lead to enhanced access to useful, relevant, appropriate, preferred, and used financial solutions for MSMEs delivered using digital tools. The table below summarizes the approach financial institutions can employ to enhance access to finance for MSMEs:

Let us look at each of these aspects in detail.

What digital technologies can financial institutions embed in their business models for MSME finance?

Existing formal financial solutions fail to meet the needs of MSMEs, which presents a significant opportunity for innovation in business models and products. Some approaches to the adoption of innovative business models are as follows:

  • Traditional financial institutions that use specialized services in collaboration with service providers, offer technology-driven services, such as credit assessment and risk monitoring, electronic document management, workflow management, digital inventory management and record-keeping, and process automation.
  • A focus on enterprises along specific clusters and segments, such as Kopo Kopo in Kenya for mobile money merchants, Neogrowth in India for merchant cash advances, Konfio in Mexico for micro-businesses, and Tienda Pago in Peru for small stores.
  • A digital marketplace or platform for financial services, such as SME Corner in India and Yoco in South Africa.

How could financial institutions develop better financial solutions for MSMEs?

Financial institutions can enrich their assessment of client needs, profiles, and segments by better understanding their footprints—digital or potentially digital, to innovate products and services. This data, clubbed with an analysis of behavioral patterns, could lead to hyper-customization of solutions on the go to meet specific needs of MSMEs. Some interesting product-level innovations include digital overdrafts or working capital credit for enterprises, merchant cash advances, invoice discounting within a value or supply chain, receivables financing, and reverse factoring.

How can financial institutions enhance the efficacy of MSME finance by digitizing processes?

The table below highlights how financial institutions can use digital technologies to enhance efficiency and effectiveness across the process flow.

How could financial institutions use an omnichannel approach and embed digital channels in distribution?

An omnichannel experience involves using technology platforms to improve customer acquisition and user experience while transacting. It allows customers to interact with numerous distribution and delivery channels simultaneously. The emergence of digital platforms and alternative channels has changed the way customers bank. The more access points they have, the better the user experience. Increasingly few customers now want to step into a bank branch.

With the changing market dynamics and preference for more ways to connect and transact, financial institutions need to consider using multiple seamlessly integrated channels to enable entrepreneurs to transact. Despite the complexity of an omnichannel experience, it provides entrepreneurs with a holistic brand experience while financial institutions benefit from the unified view of an entrepreneur. To serve entrepreneurs effectively, financial institutions can use agents, mobile banking applications, internet banking applications, and API-based integrations, besides branches and ATMs.

MSC, through its experience of enabling the digital transformation of financial institutions, has observed that “phygital” models, a combination of physical approaches with the use of digital tools, work better as opposed to an entirely digital model. This is especially the case when users are about to make a decision. A human interface at the point of decision-making reassures users and encourages them to prefer, choose, and use digital financial services confidently. Financial institutions can use trained agents to help entrepreneurs understand solutions and decide which ones to use.

How could financial institutions provide a first-class user experience using a digital engagement approach?

A great user experience involves customer-centric solutions and a manner of delivery that mimics the behaviors and attitudes of users. This ensures that the provision of services is clear, obvious, and intuitive for end-users. To build a customer-centric solution, financial institutions need to focus on user experience, assess bottlenecks that hinder users, incorporate the customer journey approach, embed the progressive learning curve of users, implement design thinking, and personalize user experience.

Financial institutions can utilize digital technology to enhance access to finance for MSMEs. The use of digital technology to enhance access to finance has assumed greater importance since the onset of the pandemic. For this, financial institutions first need to resolve key constraints through the following measures:

  • Use alternative data to accurately assess key risks in lending to enterprises and make informed decisions on providing access to finance to MSMEs
  • Use cost-effective digital channels to reach MSMEs
  • Enhance the efficiency of processes through business process re-engineering and automation to enable a quicker turnaround
  • Enhance returns through low-cost, digitally-enabled operations
  • Deliver end-user customizable solutions that MSMEs will prefer, chose, and use
  • Provide a first-class user experience

 

Digitizing the operations of MSMEs: A big step to strengthen their resilience

Posted on by MSC

About 17% of businesses surveyed by MSC in India, Indonesia, Kenya, and the Philippines have closed due to local restrictions and low demand for goods and services. Meanwhile, micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in the informal sector fared worse. MSMEs, which have been the pillar for many economies, have been struggling to survive in the post-COVID-19 world.

According to the World Bank, SMEs contribute about 90% of businesses and 50% of employment worldwide. Formal SMEs contribute around 40% to the national GDP in emerging economies. MSMEs have an even higher share in the economy if we include informal enterprises. COVID-19 created a challenging environment for MSMEs and only agile businesses have a better chance to survive the crisis. Yet only a few enterprises have realized that digitization may bring agility and resilience to the operations and expand their reach. In a survey conducted by MSC in India, Indonesia, Kenya, and the Philippines, only 38% of respondents have reported that they either increased the use of digital payments or started using digital modes of payment for transactions.

Digitization brings ample opportunities to MSMEs

Digitization of MSMEs offers them the chance to differentiate themselves from the competition. The 2019 APEC SME Ministerial Statement noted that e-commerce platforms allow SMEs to gain greater access to diverse global markets and can mitigate risk within supply chains. Digitization enables enterprises to implement digital technology to:

  • Expand geographical reach and acquire new customers: With the growth of digital platforms, the rising prominence of e-commerce, and the low barriers to entry, MSMEs can expand their market and overcome the limitations of physical location. E-commerce has also paved the way for MSMEs to serve rural and remote customers, ultimately adding to their customer base. In Africa, 82% of the enterprises engaged solely in cross-border e-commerce are micro and small enterprises. E-commerce also offers easy access to the international markets for women-owned enterprises.
  • Better customer engagement: MSMEs that operate digitally can manage their customer base effectively by using social media to ensure higher engagement levels. As per a survey of US consumers, in March, 2020, online spending increased by 30%. As customers have radically altered their buying patterns, digitization has become essential to run a business.
  • Cost-effective business operations: MSMEs that used the Internet lowered their costs by about 22% to source raw materials, manage inventory, and achieve higher productivity.
  • Increased business profitability: MSMEs that spent more than 30% of their budget on Internet technologies raised revenue nine times as fast as MSMEs that spent less than 10%. Digitization can help MSMEs enhance revenue by 26%. In India, MSMEs that adopted e-commerce have reported 27% higher revenue growth than their offline counterparts.
  • Higher and better access to finance: As MSMEs increase their digital footprint, they become more visible to banks and lenders. MSMEs can easily access credit as financial institutions can utilize digital data to assess credit risk more accurately.
  • Efficient customer credit management: With digitization, MSMEs can track customer credit and also can set a limit of credit for customers. It can act as a risk mitigation measure and keep a check on the credit loss and help maintain an efficient cash flow in the business.

Opportunity comes with challenges

Nonetheless, MSMEs that wish to embrace digitization face various challenges.

  • Lack of understanding of how technology helps: MSMEs lack awareness of the benefits of technology. Most MSMEs have doubts about the return on investment from adopting technology. The lack of awareness and skepticism around the benefits lead to low uptake. Furthermore, MSMEs lack the skills to understand and participate in the digital economy, which contributes to the limited adoption.
  • Cost of technology adoption: A lack of disposable funds to acquire technology for the business limits the ability of MSMEs to benefit from digital technologies. The vast majority of MSMEs have been decapitalized by the pandemic—they have run down stocks, depleted savings, and had to borrow from informal sources just to stay afloat. So, enterprises will need access to credit to resume business and adopt technology and digitize their operations. 19% of enterprises in Africa find the high commissions taken by e-commerce platforms as a major bottleneck. For these businesses, securing loans from traditional banks and financial institutions is a time-taking and tiresome process. The Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India (the central bank in India) have implemented PSB loans in 59 minutes to respond to this challenge. The initiative has digitized the lending process so that a borrower can access a loan within 59 minutes. Such programs that digitize and automate access to finance for MSMEs through a marketplace platform will help entrepreneurs access credit with greater ease.
  • Concerns around data privacy and exposure to digital fraud: Cybersecurity firm McAfee estimated the impact of cybercrime on the global economy at nearly USD 600 billion pre-COVID. Post-COVID, the value at risk due to cybercrimes may increase even further as the adoption of digital tools for procurement, payment, inventory management, etc. has risen significantly. While large businesses and government-owned enterprises can track and protect themselves against cyber threats, the associated costs and lack of awareness about these threats make the management of cybercrimes difficult for MSMEs.

What is needed to catalyze the digitization of MSMEs?

MSMEs need better access to e-platforms, better payment and delivery services, streamlined customs procedures, a robust data privacy system, and targeted skill-building to ensure they can benefit from e-commerce.

The first step to digitize MSMEs’ operations is to build the digital capacities of entrepreneurs

Many MSME entrepreneurs cannot intuitively appreciate the benefits or value proposition of the use of digital technologies. They struggle to trust, navigate, and use technology to market their products and services, receive payments, and access digital financial services. Carefully designed and delivered digital skilling programs based on an understanding of their mental models can enable MSMEs to use digital technology to grow their businesses. While building the digital capability of MSMEs, a mix of the following works best:

Supporting the journey of digitization for MSMEs during the pandemic requires an innovative approach that will allow them to reap its benefits while overcoming challenges. Entrepreneurs need support at all stages of their digital journey, as they start as beginners, move to intermediate level, and acquire experienced status.

  • At the beginner level, entrepreneurs are new to the digital world. Influenced by their peer group and family, they start with the use of various social media applications, mostly to communicate and acquire knowledge. At this stage, they need support to enable digital payments for their business, participate in various basic social media and e-commerce platforms, and access credit using digital platforms.
  • Once they reach the intermediate level, entrepreneurs become comfortable with using digital tools for functions they have learnt at the beginner level. At this stage, they may need help in using digital tools for intermediate functions, such as customer service and credit management, branding and marketing, participating in value chains and supply chains, and taxation.
  • At the experienced level, entrepreneurs are comfortable with digital applications and can navigate applications that support the business. At this stage, they expect assistance on tools on product standardization, copyright, and trademark registration, use of advanced digital marketing including search engine optimizations (SEO), Google Ads, and other marketing tools.

As MSMEs build their skills and embrace technology, policymakers may take steps to support their digital transformation in the following ways:

  • MSMEs still have significantly low adoption of technology, such as the use of social media and other online channels for business communication. The government may incentivize the use of digital channels by MSMEs and provide access to subsidized credit for MSMEs to digitize. The government may also develop appropriate digital infrastructure to make the digitization of MSMEs possible. For example, the Government of India has recently launched the Digital Saksham Initiative in collaboration with MasterCard to strengthen the ability of MSMEs to market products better through greater know-how and digital payment acceptance.
  • Digital literacy will play a role to catalyze the uptake of digital technologies and address skill gaps. Public and private agencies must join hands to promote digital literacy and enhance trust in digital solutions. The government can promote this as a part of the academic and vocational curriculum in colleges and training institutes. In India, the government, EdTech start-ups, and tech businesses have joined hands to help MSMEs to grow their business online.
  • Make mobile money and digital credit more accessible and affordable. To promote mobile money in the country, policymakers and think tanks can mandate lower transaction fees. During the pandemic, Kenya and other countries took this step to promote online payment. In Kenya, more than one-fourth of the adult population uses digital credit and most of them use it to meet their needs of working capital. The government may push for the expansion of digital credit beyond consumer finance to cater to the financial needs of MSMEs by nudging or mandating providers to focus on enterprise finance.
  • Enable policies to protect users against digital fraud and cybercrime. The government and policymakers can develop suitable policies to ensure that the average user is safeguarded against the risk of digital fraud and cybercrime. The government could also develop and deliver awareness campaigns for users to inform them of key issues and ways to mitigate the risk of fraud.

Although digitization is an ongoing process, the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled MSMEs to transform their businesses through digital means. The digitization of MSMEs will add more revenue to the entire economy. The CISCO 2020 APAC SMB Digital Maturity Study found that a shift of 50% of MSMEs to the digital challenger stage (the enterprises where all core processes are automated and productivity rates are increasing) could add between USD 2.6 and 3.1 trillion to Asia Pacific’s GDP by 2024.

In Africa, MSMEs currently provide more than 50% of GDP. We envisage that as MSMEs digitize, their contribution to the national economies will increase significantly. With the said potential, the time is ripe now to focus on the digitization of MSMEs. Using digital means, the MSMEs can utilize e-commerce, social commerce, and digital payments to support their recovery after their pandemic, while reviving their businesses and building greater resilience to survive similar crises.

Many MSMEs are dying—can we realize the full potential of the digital revolution to save them?

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MSMEs are facing an existential crisis. The economic impact of the COVID-19 has been as bad as we had feared … possibly worse.

About 17% of businesses surveyed by MSC in India, Indonesia, Kenya, and the Philippines have closed due to local restrictions and low demand for goods and services, while micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in the informal sector fared worse. A recent World Bank report suggests that in Kenya, one-third of household-run MSEs have not been operating for months.

 

Declining income and rising expenses is a double whammy for enterprises in such trying times. On the demand side, the income of businesses declined due to reduced footfall, lower customer demand, and reduced purchasing power of customers. At the household level, MSME owners have had to pay for increased household expenses for basic goods, electricity, and the education of children. On the supply side, the factors contributing to the decline in income included disruptions in the supply chain and limited operating hours for the businesses impacted by the lockdowns and restrictions on movement.

Entrepreneurs have experienced severe challenges related to cash flow. This was due to three key issues—limited access to goods on supplier credit, most sales being conducted on credit, which resulted in increasing receivables, and the rising cost of supplies. MSMEs have resorted to running down their life savings, borrowing from their social networks, and even selling off business and household assets to meet their cash flow requirements.

In Kenya, with other expenses gradually stabilizing, repayment of loans has emerged as the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs. They have been struggling to repay new loans taken during the pandemic or pay penalties on old loans, or both, due to delays in installments.

MSMEs have struggled to borrow from formal financial institutions as they encounter more stringent terms, such as higher costs of credit and requests for physical collateral. Financial service providers are also reluctant to offer loans, let alone discounted interest rates as the pandemic devastated their cash-flows. But many MSMEs need credit to be able to revive their business, restock, and survive the crisis. In December, 2020, 50% of the respondents reported that they applied for the loan compared to 39% of MSMEs in September, 2020.

This situation is not unique for entrepreneurs in Kenya and is replicated worldwide—as seen from studies by MSC and the World Bank. Both the studies note that local enterprises now have limited access to cash and credit for business. In the absence of credit for MSMEs, they will be unable to restart their businesses or reach their previous scale—as their efforts to respond to the pandemic have eaten into much of their working capital.

How has the inclusive finance sector responded to these challenges?

The response from the inclusive finance sector to this crisis has been largely traditional—and, as a consequence, we risk losing an important opportunity to “build back better”.

Governments and donors remain largely focused on traditional solutions, such as supporting microfinance institutions and credit guarantee initiatives that are managed largely by traditional banks. For example, in December, 2020, the Government of Kenya launched the credit guarantee scheme (CGS) by allocating an initial seed capital of KES 3 billion (˜USD 30 million). This approach may be necessary and relatively easy in the short run, but we should think more strategically.

We should not let this crisis go to waste. It provides us the opportunity to accelerate several interrelated transitions to allow MSMEs and the financial institutions that serve them to realize the full potential of the digital revolution.

  1. Formalize informal enterprises

Most micro- and many small enterprises remain informal and thus do not qualify for the stimulus packages of governments. The fallout from COVID-19 could provide the push needed for these enterprises to register and formalize. Using COVID-specific cash transfers, access to government procurement as well as credit facilities, and support for digitization as incentives, governments may encourage informal enterprises to formalize. Countries could introduce a low-touch and paper-lite registration for informal enterprises to allow them to qualify for support in the event of a disaster. Such a system would have to recognize the disincentives to formalization, in particular the entrepreneurs’ fear of falling into the tax net, and set reasonable levels of revenue for enterprises as a threshold to be taxed.

  1. Digitize MSME operations

The pandemic pushed some MSMEs to increase their use of digital marketing and payment channels. While the change has been more pronounced in some countries, such as India and Indonesia, it was significantly incremental in others, such as in the Philippines and Uganda. Nonetheless, formalization and the growing range of technology available to support enterprises would allow them to manage their business more effectively and create a digital footprint upon which financial service providers can make informed lending decisions. MSC’s analysis has shown, unsurprisingly, that different merchants, for example, are at different stages of readiness to make this transition.

Governments, donor agencies, and the private sector will need to work together to enhance the digital capability and the uptake and usage of digital marketing and payment systems. This collaboration will require mobile money and other digital payment providers to revisit their pricing and commission systems for both cash-in/cash-out (CICO) agents and merchants. These changes are essential to encourage the move to keep money digital and to maximize digital payments. CICO agents and merchants will need to be equipped and incentivized to utilize their position as community influencers to become agents of change. The agents and merchants are uniquely positioned to do this at the key “teachable moments” when their customers come to transact.

  1. Facilitate the digital transformation of traditional financial service providers

As an integral part of seizing the opportunity provided by COVID-19 to accelerate the digital revolution, financial institutions (including MFIs) must implement digital transformation. This will allow them to deliver faster and cheaper services, equip them to serve MSME customers better, and allow microfinance institutions to utilize their strengths to continue to serve rural and urban markets.

Part of these changes will be through partnerships between traditional incumbents and fintechs to help achieve the objectives of digital transformation. Governments and donor agencies should set up a lab, a community of practice, and earmarked funds that financial institutions can avail of on a matching fund basis to encourage digital transformation. Forward-thinking microfinance investment vehicles should help their investee organizations with the required matching funds to protect their investments.

  1. Re-engineer digital credit to focus on enterprise rather than consumer lending

Digital credit providers have the potential to play a leadership role in the response to the pandemic. They could offer rapid loans based on alternative data, particularly if they could access the credit guarantee schemes provided by a range of agencies across the globe. Yet currently, many of the burgeoning digital credit operations, particularly in Africa, are focused on the consumer rather than enterprise lending. This needs to change.

The unintended consequences of aggressive push marketing, unacceptable collection practices, borrowing for sports betting, and negative listing on credit bureaus have been profoundly negative. MSC has already made a range of recommendations on how digital credit providers can make their products more user-friendly and thus profitable. However, to realize the full potential of digital credit, providers will have to both rethink their applications, user interfaces and experience (UI/UX), algorithms, and make use of the digitization of MSMEs we advocate in point 2 above. The regulators must ensure that fintechs have a level and fair playing field and build adequate provisions to protect the end-users.

We do not want to pretend that this transformation will be easy. It will require collaboration and a huge effort from governments, donors, the private sector, and fintechs. Yet it can potentially change—at a fundamental level—how enterprises conduct their business, how they access financial services, and how well they can respond to the next crisis.

MGNREGA: The delay in wage payments – Part II

Posted on by MSC

In the first part of this blog series, we looked at the genesis of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), a social protection program introduced by the Government of India (GoI) in 2005 to help rural Indians achieve livelihood security. However, delayed wage payments and rejected transactions continue to plague the system and compromise the goals MGNREGA was established to achieve. In the second part of this blog series, we will look at the cause of such delays and ways to alleviate process inefficiencies going forward.

Why do delays occur?

While delays may occur at the first, second, or both stages of the payments process, payments are rejected only during Stage 2. We discus some reasons behind the delay or rejection of wage payments under MGNREGA below.

I) Delays at Stage 1: Delays at this stage occur during the generation and approval of fund transfer orders (FTOs) by field-level officials at the block and village levels. The causes for these delays may include a shortage of work officials, lack of capacity building, or the lack of computers or internet connectivity needed to generate FTOs at the block level. The Fourth Common Review Mission of the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) (2018) observed significant vacancies for the position of field assistant. This suggests the number of staff tasked to handle FTOs is inadequate. Additionally, some studies have also identified other administrative lapses, such as the loss or mismanagement of attendance sheets before the entry of data into the MGNREGA system, failure to generate or authorize FTOs, and the closure of work in the system without the completion of payments.

In 2015, the government introduced a Mobile Monitoring System (MMS) as a pilot project across 35,000 village councils to eliminate inefficiencies at the ground level. The pilot also sought to enable field functionaries to update the database in real-time through an MGNREGA mobile-based application. However, this system managed to achieve only limited progress. As of 16th March, 2021,[1] only 13% (34,212) of the total village councils across India are registered under MMS. Of these, only 21% (7,027) have used the system to update data. Though village councils can use this system to record the demand and allocation of work to workers and measure the works completed, they use it solely to fill attendance sheets at present. Delays at Stage 1 cause a ripple effect throughout the process, which subsequently delays the completion of the second stage within the stipulated timeframe.

II) Delays at Stage 2: Delays at this stage can be broadly examined in terms of administrative delays, shortage of funds, rejection of payment transactions, and technical errors.

  • Administrative delays: These delays are attributed to the central government withholding wage payments for certain states. This is because some states fail to submit their audited fund statements for the previous year as well as utilization certificates or bank reconciliation certificates within the specified time frame. The government is yet to process around 21% and 70% of the FTO transactions generated for January and February, 2021 respectively, for wage payments. Sometimes, the government also withholds payments due to a shortage of funds allocated for various states.
  • Shortage of funds: On average, approximately 20% of the funds available under MGNREGA are used annually to cover the payment liabilities of the previous year. Due to this, some states overutilize their funds and struggle with payments for the work completed in the third and fourth quarters of the financial year. This is evident by the fact that the GoI allocated an additional INR 110 billion (USD 1.5 billion[1]) above the budget of INR 600 billion (USD 8.2 billion) for MGNREGA in 2019-20.

The chart below illustrates the annual expenditure, which is higher than MGNREGA’s annual budget and availability of funds over the years.

(Source[3])

Estimates suggest that to provide 100 days of employment to all 149.9 million registered households at the national average wage of INR 202 per person per day, the GoI will need to allocate at least INR 3.03 trillion (USD 41.3 billion) annually. As per the data of 2020-21, registered households were provided with an average of 49.5 workdays.

  • Rejection of payment transactions: Around 777 bank branches across India reported rejecting at least 100 transactions each in the past six months. Banks cited various reasons for the rejection, such as the absence of accounts to which payments were made, invalid accounts, and a mismatch in account description, among various others. Banks also rejected transactions if the account was closed or the participant was not mapped to the product. While rejected transactions are supposed to be regenerated for reprocessing, 5% of the rejected transactions have not been regenerated yet, which causes further delays or rejection of payments.

Of the total FTO transactions through Ne-FMS, 45% of the payments were processed through the Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) System. Of these, about 3% were rejected in 2020-21. The reasons include unlinked or unverified Aadhaar numbers (unique identification numbers) with the MGNREGA registration number of workers. So far, the Aadhaar numbers of only 68% of active workers have been linked, and only 77% of these have been verified.

  • Technical errors: Additional delays also occur during the online processing of FTOs when some of the transaction files are lost during online transmission. Though the Ministry of Rural Development’s program division may receive some files, they cannot be processed due to errors while some others may lack digital signatures of authorizing officials.

Other than delays at various stages of the payment process, the accounting of delays by the MGNREGA server is also flawed, as highlighted in the first part of our blog series. This affects the calculation and payment of delayed compensation that workers are legally entitled to if their wage payments get delayed. While the central government and payment agencies are absolved due to this flaw, the state governments are left to bear the burden of the delayed compensation.

While the causes mentioned above shine a light on the reasons for delays or rejection of payments, a recent assessment examines the last-mile challenges workers face in accessing their wages once they have been credited into their bank or post office accounts. From the sample of 1,947 MGNREGA workers across three Indian states, about 45% of respondents had to make multiple visits to banks and 52% to post offices to withdraw their wages. Of the 249 respondents with rejected payments, 77% did not know why their payments had failed. Multiple visits to withdraw wages and get information about rejected payments lead to loss of a day’s work and wages for the workers.

The way forward

Delayed MGNREGA payments run counter to the program’s objective of providing livelihood security and social protection to millions of rural households in India. As wage rates under MGNREGA are 40% to 50% lower than minimum wages paid to unskilled agricultural workers in India, delays could further discourage workers from requesting work under the program. However, recognizing the potential of MGNREGA, GoI had allocated an additional INR 400 billion (USD 5.45 billion) above the estimated budget of INR 610 billion (USD 8.3 billion) for 2020-21. The additional budget helped provide livelihood security to the growing number of unemployed people in rural India, which saw a rise due to the COVID-19 global health pandemic and the subsequent lockdown in the country. Though the allocation of more funds is a step in the right direction, it is not sufficient to curb the growing economic distress in rural India if delays in wage payments persist.

Therefore, the following measures should be adopted or implemented to resolve issues that cause these delays:

  • Investment in human resources: As highlighted in the previous section, vacancies in the administrative structure hinder the effective operations of MGNREGA. Therefore, respective state governments and district program officers should identify vacancies and employ field functionaries at the village level at the earliest. Moreover, overburdened with work, program officers like the Block Development Officer fail to approve FTOs promptly, despite the support of accountants and technicians. State governments could assign assistant program officers specifically to implement MGNREGA.
  • Investment in technology: Utilizing technology can help reduce operational delays. For this, governments should actively adopt and implement the existing Mobile Monitoring System (MMS) across all village councils to keep the database updated in real-time through demand submission and work allocation, recording attendance, and measurement of work at the village level. Additionally, governments must also equip block offices with computers, printers, and internet connectivity to implement and review MGNREGA effectively through its MIS at the block level.
  • Adoption of automated processes: With the adoption of MMS at the village level, governments should rethink the necessity for the current two-step process of generation and approval of FTOs at the block level. The government can automate the approval of FTOs, with the fulfillment of necessary inputs at the village level. Further, with the generation of FTOs, the wages should be credited automatically into the accounts of workers without seeking manual approvals to process FTOs at the program division of MoRD.

Additionally, field functionaries should verify and capture the details of registered households on the MMS, such as their names, registration numbers, bank account details, and Aadhaar numbers. The verification process will reduce both the cases of transaction failures and the burden of the verification process at the block level. Gradually, the government can adopt the single source of truth technology across line ministries and programs, which will allow it to automate the collection and verification processes of the details of workers.

Since MGNREGA is largely automated with a digital process of fund flow, the central government can adopt the concept of automated utilization certificates generated through the MGNREGA MIS. Meanwhile, even if state governments delay submitting the necessary financial and administrative documents, the center should not withhold wage payments.

The Ministry of Rural Development and the governments of state and union territories should collectively enforce the mandate for timely payment of wages. They should work to address delays caused by burdensome administrative, manual processes, and infrastructural gaps. Utilizing technology, capacity building, and allocation of sufficient funds can help accomplish this goal. The state and central governments, all of which share one goal, should also collaborate to ensure rural Indians receive employment as well as wages on time.

[1] The data from the MGNREGA MIS used throughout the blog is as reported on 16th March, 2021, unless specified otherwise.

[2] Conversion rate of 1 USD = INR 73.3 has been used throughout the blog (as on 3rd March, 2021)

[3] Sources: MGNREGA Financial statements as on 22nd March, 2021 – 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21; Budget – 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020 to 2022.