Opportunity International supports customers with interest buy-down and guarantee facility
GABV member Opportunity International Savings and Loans Limited, in collaboration with VISA FOUNDATION, is implementing an Economic Recovery and Rebuild Initiative project to help reduce the impact of Covid-19 on businesses of its existing clients through interest buy-down and guarantee facility. With funding support from the VISA foundation, the project commenced in June 2021 and concluded in May 2022.
The project's main objective was to help reduce the interest burden of their existing clients by reimbursing them with 50% of their interest amount. This is to reward our loyal clients while also encouraging new clients and defaulters to repay their loans so that they can benefit from such interventions. These beneficiaries consisted of individual women clients, or groups with a majority of women membership, with 85% out of 852 beneficiaries being women. The key qualification criteria were simple - these clients complete their loan repayments without defaulting at the end of the maturity date, with a minimum loan cycle of seven, where the client benefits from the interest buy-down in form of a 50% interest refund. Furthermore, a subsequent survey showed that 95% of Opportunity's clients hailed the project as an important intervention at a time when COVID had disrupted many local and global production and distribution systems.