Integrating Micro and SME Finance
Duggleby & Associates, Inc. began in the 1980’s to do project work for clients including USAID, The World Bank and UNDP in designing and evaluating credit facilities for SMEs (under then popular donor “lines of credit”), and providing technical assistance to banks in improving credit analysis, supervision and recovery of SME loans.
As the 80’s closed with a more intense focus upon micro credit and poverty reduction, the firm moved “down market” to design and evaluate micro credit programs and provide training and technical assistance to micro finance institutions and to banks.
During the early l990’s, the firm was commissioned to develop for the World Bank and five other donors an in depth study in Francophone West Africa of the correlation between financial institutions’ level of adaptation to culturally based practices for investing and saving, and their rate of success in recovering loans and mobilizing private savings. The study team interviewed financial services providers along the continuum from informal credit providers (traditional Tontines and rural farmer associations) to commercial banks and donor supported non bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs). Study results, published in the book “Africa Management for the 90’s” (World Bank, 1994), included several models for linking informal sector borrowers with formal financial institutions, which have since been used by the Bank in a number of countries to support downscaling.
financing