Banking on Social Intelligence: A Community Model for Microbusiness Lending

The Trajectory Africa

In the previous episode of the Trajectory Africa, we heard from Kiiru Muhoya and Judith Bogonko at Fingo about the importance of cultivating Africa’s youth as the next generation of retail consumers of financial services.

In this episode, we’ll hear how Femi Iromini, Co-Founder and CEO of Moni, and his team, have created a community lending model for microbusinesses that has the DNA of a not completely neobank, if the "neo" in neobank, means digital only. The rule of thumb in lending is it’s easy to give money out, but difficult to get it back.

But Moni’s approach suggests that if you use technology to make existing social structures like community savings groups (otherwise known as ajo or esusu in Nigeria, tontines in Francophone Africa, chamas in Kenya, stokvels in South Africa, sanduks in South Sudan, etc.) work better, you can leverage social intelligence to build trust, efficiently underwrite loans, and eventually create the foundations of a bank by and for the people.

Tune in to hear about:

[1:49] - Lessons learned from previous startup experience

[6:44] - Definition of community banking and characteristics of a bank for Africa

[12:00] - How community financing works at Moni

[22:00] - How Moni’s community lending model impacts consumer acquisition and retention

[25:45] - Loan terms and approach to recovery

[35:33] - Moni’s business model and transition from community lending to retail (neo)banking

[45:55] - Portability of trust and social intelligence underwriting as moat

[51:47] - The importance of offline engagement and early signs of product market fit

[59:39] - Counterintuitive first principle

Recommendations:

• Chasing Outliers. Why Context Matters for Early Stage Investing in Africa, a report I co-authored on VC investing in Africa

• Frontier Fintech Newsletter. Mentioned in this episode, Frontier Fintech is an excellent primer on the fundamentals of fintech in Africa.

Connect on social media:

• Femi Iromini on LinkedIn
• Femi Iromini on Twitter
• The Trajectory Africa on LinkedIn
• Tayo Akinyemi on LinkedIn
• Tayo Akinyemi on Twitter