USAID has decided to support and expand the Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) Program for the period May 2008 until March 2013.
Over the past 10 years, the MABS Program has provided technical assistance and training to rural banks to profitably provide financial services to the microenterprise sector. Since 1998, MABS participating banks have served more than 470,000 microenterprise borrowers providing them with more than 1.5 million loans totaling more than PhP 17 billion and helped to expand the number of small deposit accounts. Today, the MABS participating rural banks manage more than 1.3 million micro deposit accounts totaling more than PhP 1.7 billion. During this new phase of the MABS Program, the MABS team and their accredited MABS Service Providers will continue to provide technical assistance and training utilizing the MABS Approach to assist more banks expand access to microfinance services through more branches across the countryside. The MABS Approach to microfinance is a comprehensive system based on microfinance best practices.
|
In late 2004, the MABS team worked with select rural banks to design micro agri-loan products in order to assist rural banks to expand access to credit for small farmers and agricultural households, while reducing the risk of lending to this sector. The micro agri-loan product was specifically approved and categorized in line with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) definition of microfinance loan products under a Monetary Board resolution in January 2006. Since the product was launched, over 16,000 loans totaling more than PhP 200 million were provided to more than 8,000 farmers. Portfolio-at-risk for these loans has remained excellent, averaging less than 3%. Given the growing demands to expand agricultural outputs in the Philippines at this time, the MABS team will continue to support the interest of rural banks to assist bank to customize and offer their own micro agri loan products using the MABS Approach.
Since 2005, MABS has also worked with 39 rural banks with more than 350 branches to pilot test and launch mobile phone banking services and mobile commerce solutions for clients of rural banks. MABS also worked to ensure that banks could be approved by the BSP to offer electronic banking services via mobile phones for their clients. The early success of these initiatives has led to a significant increase in mobile phone-based transactions at rural banks which continues to expand at a rate of more than 10% per month.
RBAP and MABS also launched a very successful website located at www.mobilephonebanking.rbap.org which now receives more 30,000 hits a month. This website provides rural banks and their clients and customers overseas with updated access to mobile phone banking services and a complete list of accredited rural banks in the Philippines along with hundreds of remittance partners overseas. With the increasing costs of fuel, rural banks and their clients will continue to look toward ways to reduce the costs of transportation and time spent by clients and their staff. The mobile phone banking services being pioneered by MABS in partnership with Globe Telecom’s G-Xchange utilizing the GCASH platform will benefit more rural banks and their clients and help the sector to offer new and more cost effective banking services than ever before.
In keeping with the BSP’s approach to Financial Inclusion, MABS will also be assisting rural banks to diversify the microfinance products and value added services they offer to their customers by working on micro housing finance and micro insurance services. The MABS team will also work on collaborating with the BSP on the implementation of the upcoming Credit Information Systems Act and assist rural banks to take part in an expanded credit information sharing initiative.
|
|
|
|
Events / Announcements |
|
|
| |
Downloads |
|
|
|
|
