Villagers in the Ayeyarwady region of Myanmar. They live in a remote area which can be reached only by boat. Their life remains much the same even after the coup / Taejun Shin
Gojo is pleased to announce the publication of our 2023 Impact Report.
Gojo’s mission is to extend financial inclusion across the globe. To provide vulnerable people with access to high-quality, affordable and useful financial services, we need to deeply understand who we are serving and what their goals are. This is why we chose “Who Are Our Clients?” as the theme of this year’s impact report.
Highlights from the Impact Report
- Client Profile: Using core banking system data, we learnt that the majority of our clients are micro- and small entrepreneurs who earn up to 30% above the World Bank poverty line of $6.85 PPP per capita per day. This tells us that our clients, although not extremely poor, belong to a segment of society that nonetheless struggles with income instability and is vulnerable to poverty as a result of shocks such as family illness or natural disasters.
- Money management: We used our financial diaries data from Cambodia and Sri Lanka to look at how vulnerable people manage their money and use their loans. This has given us a more nuanced understanding of the factors that create good and bad outcomes from borrowing and how people cope with debt stress. We present this in the form of case studies in the report.
- Client satisfaction and experience: Five of our group companies participated in the 2022-23 60 Decibels Microfinance Index survey. The survey results show that overall, clients have positive experiences with our group companies and would recommend them to family and friends, although there is room for improvement against global benchmarks.
- Stakeholder impact: In recognition of our responsibility as an organisation towards our people (employees), local and international communities, the environment and our investors, we also include an overview of Gojo’s impact on these stakeholders in the report. This year, we piloted a greenhouse gas emissions calculator, and are sharing Gojo’s emissions at the holding company level in this report for the first time.
- Corporate governance: The report includes a summary of Gojo’s governance structure, and announces the appointment of Ignacio Mas-Ribo as an Outside Director, and the retirement of Stuart Rutherford and Mangyo Kinoshita from our board in June 2023.
We hope you enjoy reading our impact report, and welcome any feedback or comments, which can be directed to Cheriel Neo (cheriel.neo@gojo.co).
Impact Report Webinar
We will be holding a webinar in English to share and discuss the key findings from our impact report. It will be held on Thursday 14 September at 1:00 pm CET / 9:00 pm JST. Please register for the webinar here: https://gojo.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BUEZqLQ-S3SG7g_WLJOw4g
Future impact research
In addition to continuing our financial diaries project in Sri Lanka, Gojo embarked on a collaboration with Stuart Rutherford and L-IFT (Low-Income Financial Transformation) to support and co-manage the Hrishipara Diaries as of 1 July 2023. We are honoured to be able to support the world’s longest running financial diaries project and believe the data from the Hrishipara Diaries will be a valuable counterpoint to our existing financial diary data, enabling Gojo to study money management behaviour in a setting with a deeply entrenched culture of micro-savings.
About us
Gojo & Company, Inc. is a Tokyo-based holding company of eight inclusive financial service providers operating in Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, and Tajikistan. Gojo was founded to extend financial inclusion to everyone in the world, beginning with developing countries. Gojo encourages the formalisation and growth of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Our long-term goal is to enable the provision of high-quality affordable financial services for 100 million clients in 50 countries by 2030. Established in 2014, Gojo Group is serving more than 1.7 million clients and managing an AUM of USD 763 million with 7,150 employees (consolidated total). Gojo was selected for the Global Award (METI Minister's Award) at the Nippon Startup Awards 2023.
Website: https://www.gojo.co