News of MicroSave Publications, Trainings and Workshops

Equity Bank is enhancing the size and capacities of its in-house research department to ensure that a client-focussed approach is followed by the bank in its expansion across East Africa. To further this objective, the bank intends to recruit and train country focussed research teams in Kenya (adding more staff strength to the current team), Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda. MicroSave was approached to help build capacities in the current staff at Equity Bank's Research and Product Development department to enable them to provide training on market research skills for new staff proposed to be recruited.

MicroSave assisted the Research and Product Development department in its requirement by helping to adapt MicroSave's Market Research for MicroFinance toolkit to suit Equity's requirement and conducting a Training of Trainers (ToT) for staff of the department. During the training, MicroSave helped the team to understand the principles of adult learning, provided necessary frameworks to design and deliver a training curriculum, conducted interactive exercises to facilitate understanding and provided tips on effectively delivering a training programme.

Progress Out of Povert Index (PPI)^TM Training for RGVN, November 9-12, India

MicroSave team visited VVD to conduct Product Development training. VVD operates in the state of Manipur with two branches, one in Imphal and one in Ukhrool. With an outstanding portfolio of Rs.12mn and about 1800 clients (as of May 2011), VVD is a monoproduct MFI. Given the current credit scenario in Manipur, the VVD team senses an enormous potential for business expansion in the future. Hence, the VVD team expressed the desire to learn a systemic way of understanding client needs and develop a suitable product which will serve them.

MicroSave facilitated this five day interactive training which covered the entire product development cycle. It included basics of qualitative market research for microfinance, the tools used, concept development, prototype testing and pilot testing. The training included field exercises as well where the team used the market research tools.

Training of Trainers (ToT) for Sewa Finance, December 7-9, Sri Lanka

After the process mapping exercise and development of the operations manual, it was realised that the entire operations in Sewa Finance have to undergo a considerable change. But to carry out the revised operations effectively and ensure successful implementation, adequate training of the staff was identified as a critical need. Senior staff from HO and branches were identified as potential trainers and trained on operations using customised material developed for the training. The ToT covered new approach to be followed by Sewa Finance and the rationale; training on the processes; developing training skills for the trainers; and training on new forms and formats to be used at the branches. After the ToT, the training material was translated to Sinhala and Tamil followed by two trainings for branch staff.

Internal Audit and Controls for FWWB Partner MFIs, December 20-22, India

MicroSave team conducted training for the FWWB partner MFIs across India. The three days' training was conducted from December 20-22, 2011 for twenty participants from sixteen organisations across geographies and from varied registered entities which included Society, Company registered under Section 25 of The Companies Act, Trust, NBFC, etc. Training method included lectures, discussions, role plays, case studies and exercises around concepts of internal audit and risks involved in various processes. The focus area was to explain the risk concept and clarify the inherent challenges in the system. The training facilitated the participants to identify and classify the risks in their respective organisation and devise mitigation strategies.

The training received an overwhelming response as fraud and other risk need consideration in all the MFIs represented in the training.

Workshops on Helping MFIs Create A Niche

One of the key attributes of the numerous financial products that MicroSave has developed over a decade of its work is promotion. Qualitative market research has shown that how the institution communicates with the clients is critical for the acceptance of the services.

MicroSave has worked with institutions on two key aspects - branding and marketing. While branding helps define how the institution wants to place itself and its products and services in the market, marketing helps define how to implement that. Customer service is an integral part of marketing of financial services.

With the changes in the microfinance sector in India and the sub-continent, there has been a demand for technical assistance on helping institutions to create a niche for themselves in the competitive operating environment. Recognising the need for inputs in these areas, MicroSave conducted workshops on four toolkits with selected institutions in the month of October, 2011 and January, 2012:

Corporate Branding and Identity
Strategic Marketing
Product Marketing
Customer Service

The training helped the institutions develop their brand identity and marketing plan; both for the institutions and for their specific products. The participating institutions appreciated the training as they found it relevant in preparing them to create a niche for themselves in the changing competitive microfinance environment.

Also Visit

MicroSave Website Partners


View Projects and Partners

News of MicroSave Publications, Trainings and Workshops

In this Section

Other Sections

Also Visit

Announcements

Latest Content

Videos