On 20th January 2022, we held a webinar to share how Humo, our newest partner company, has established Humo Lab to spearhead digitalization and innovation. At Humo Lab, several products have been developed and launched, including mobile banking apps, payment apps, kiosks, and more. The webinar focused on Humo’s introduction, sharing best practices on how microfinance institutions can do better to extend financial inclusion.
The one-hour event featured Taejun Shin (Founder & CEO, Gojo & Company), Firdavs Mayunusov (Co-founder and General Director, MDO Humo), Firdavs Nuriddinzoda (Director of HumoLab, MDO Humo), moderated by Arnaud Ventura (Managing Partner, Gojo & Company). The webinar consisted of four parts: Introduction of Gojo & Company, Introduction of Humo, Introduction of Humo Lab, and Panel Discussion.
In the first part, Taejun shared what financial inclusion is, what Gojo strives to achieve and how Gojo operates in many parts of the world with its newest footprint being Tajikistan. It was followed by a talk from Firdavs M. covering the history and evolution of Humo, the story of how Humo Lab was established, and how the collaboration between tech and business teams allows disruptive thinking. Firdavs N. continued the presentation to introduce user-friendly services of Humo Lab and strategies behind their provision. The last 20 minutes was a panel discussion answering questions from audience, including topics such as synergies between Gojo and Humo.
The webinar was a great success, attended by over 150 people from 22 countries. The webinar was followed by an Ask Me Anything session where the audiences enjoyed direct interaction with the panelists.
To watch or rewatch the webinar, the recording is available here:
If you are interested in learning more about Gojo and receiving invitations to our future webinars, subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
On 20th January 2022, we held a webinar to share how Humo, our newest partner company, has established Humo Lab to spearhead digitalization and innovation. At Humo Lab, several products have been developed and launched, including mobile banking apps, payment apps, kiosks, and more. The webinar focused on Humo’s introduction, sharing best practices on how microfinance institutions can do better to extend financial inclusion.
The one-hour event featured Taejun Shin (Founder & CEO, Gojo & Company), Firdavs Mayunusov (Co-founder and General Director, MDO Humo), Firdavs Nuriddinzoda (Director of HumoLab, MDO Humo), moderated by Arnaud Ventura (Managing Partner, Gojo & Company). The webinar consisted of four parts: Introduction of Gojo & Company, Introduction of Humo, Introduction of Humo Lab, and Panel Discussion.
In the first part, Taejun shared what financial inclusion is, what Gojo strives to achieve and how Gojo operates in many parts of the world with its newest footprint being Tajikistan. It was followed by a talk from Firdavs M. covering the history and evolution of Humo, the story of how Humo Lab was established, and how the collaboration between tech and business teams allows disruptive thinking. Firdavs N. continued the presentation to introduce user-friendly services of Humo Lab and strategies behind their provision. The last 20 minutes was a panel discussion answering questions from audience, including topics such as synergies between Gojo and Humo.
The webinar was a great success, attended by over 150 people from 22 countries. The webinar was followed by an Ask Me Anything session where the audiences enjoyed direct interaction with the panelists.
To watch or rewatch the webinar, the recording is available here:
If you are interested in learning more about Gojo and receiving invitations to our future webinars, subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
In order to speed up loan approval processes, many banks and microfinance institutions use computer algorithms to calculate credit scores. I'm sure many of you are familiar with seeing a numerical credit score like '700'.
Credit scoring collects various pieces of information about a loan applicant and maps them to a single number. Based on the applicant’s loan repayment history, their use of other financial services, and other factors, the algorithm calculates a score such as '670 for this applicant', '740 for that applicant', and so on. And if the score is lower than the predefined threshold, the loan will not be approved.
Here, I would like to introduce a little theorem that makes up a part of Gojo's credit scoring approach.
Whether or not you can repay a loan without issues depends to a large extent on the size of the loan. For example, if I take a loan of $1 million, and spend it all at once without thinking, I will probably have a problem repaying it later. However, if I take a loan of $1, and use it to pay for some expenses, I will probably not have a problem repaying it later. In other words, credit scoring, which measures my ability to repay the loan, should be a function of the loan size.
Now, let's extend this view just a little bit more. The larger the loan size, the higher the credit score that should be required for the borrower, and therefore the higher the hurdle. The smaller the loan size, the lower the credit score that should be required for the borrower, and the lower the hurdle.
If that is the case, then for any given borrower, there should be a loan size that represents a manageable hurdle. For any kind of borrower, if we keep reducing the loan size, we will eventually find an amount that matches the maximum credit score they can achieve.
Maxima’s MBela team with an MBela agent at her house after a community gathering. / Koh Terai
The above paragraphs outlinea little theorem about credit scoring, which is my favorite. Of course, we can take a further step to consider how we might apply it in practice.
Why don't we just look for the (maximum) loan size we believe a borrower can handle, and use that as their credit score? Rather than producing a score like '670' or '740', it would be easier for everyone to understand that $500 is the maximum possible amount they would be allowed to borrow. If the amount is clear, borrowers can plan their investment.
We are actually applying this approach in a loan product currently being offered by Maxima, our partner in Cambodia. Their small digital loans project (also known as MBela) uses an automated assessment process to provide a credit score in the form of the maximum amount each person can borrow. The resulting credit score is easy for both the agent and borrower to understand.
Gojo wants to provide services that are innovative in their simplicity.
Yoshinari Noguchi is a researcher at Gojo and Company. He works in Gojo’s R&D team, and is currently looking into new ways to understand and support money management for low-income people, as well as analysis of data from the Hrishipara diaries and Gojo’s own financial diary projects.
In order to speed up loan approval processes, many banks and microfinance institutions use computer algorithms to calculate credit scores. I'm sure many of you are familiar with seeing a numerical credit score like '700'.
Credit scoring collects various pieces of information about a loan applicant and maps them to a single number. Based on the applicant’s loan repayment history, their use of other financial services, and other factors, the algorithm calculates a score such as '670 for this applicant', '740 for that applicant', and so on. And if the score is lower than the predefined threshold, the loan will not be approved.
Here, I would like to introduce a little theorem that makes up a part of Gojo's credit scoring approach.
Whether or not you can repay a loan without issues depends to a large extent on the size of the loan. For example, if I take a loan of $1 million, and spend it all at once without thinking, I will probably have a problem repaying it later. However, if I take a loan of $1, and use it to pay for some expenses, I will probably not have a problem repaying it later. In other words, credit scoring, which measures my ability to repay the loan, should be a function of the loan size.
Now, let's extend this view just a little bit more. The larger the loan size, the higher the credit score that should be required for the borrower, and therefore the higher the hurdle. The smaller the loan size, the lower the credit score that should be required for the borrower, and the lower the hurdle.
If that is the case, then for any given borrower, there should be a loan size that represents a manageable hurdle. For any kind of borrower, if we keep reducing the loan size, we will eventually find an amount that matches the maximum credit score they can achieve.
Maxima’s MBela team with an MBela agent at her house after a community gathering. / Koh Terai
The above paragraphs outlinea little theorem about credit scoring, which is my favorite. Of course, we can take a further step to consider how we might apply it in practice.
Why don't we just look for the (maximum) loan size we believe a borrower can handle, and use that as their credit score? Rather than producing a score like '670' or '740', it would be easier for everyone to understand that $500 is the maximum possible amount they would be allowed to borrow. If the amount is clear, borrowers can plan their investment.
We are actually applying this approach in a loan product currently being offered by Maxima, our partner in Cambodia. Their small digital loans project (also known as MBela) uses an automated assessment process to provide a credit score in the form of the maximum amount each person can borrow. The resulting credit score is easy for both the agent and borrower to understand.
Gojo wants to provide services that are innovative in their simplicity.
Yoshinari Noguchi is a researcher at Gojo and Company. He works in Gojo’s R&D team, and is currently looking into new ways to understand and support money management for low-income people, as well as analysis of data from the Hrishipara diaries and Gojo’s own financial diary projects.
In today's digital world, physical cash is rapidly becoming a relic of traditional financial systems that have disadvantaged the unbanked. By combining mobile digital financial tools (such as mobile remittances and loan disbursal) with other money management tools (such as financial education), we believe unbanked people can access financial services and break out of the poverty cycle. At Gojo, we wish to include financially excluded people and enable them to achieve financial goals and self-sufficiency.
I joined Gojo as a Software Engineer in August 2020 to enable this mission and solve our mobile engineering challenges, of which there are many. I’m going to talk about two of these today.
Challenge #1:
How do you create a Digital Field Application system that works even if the cell tower is down?
Most of the time, we take internet access for granted. That’s not the case for our customers in many countries, where the internet can be patchy and a precious resource. In order to ensure that our DFA didn’t stop working when the internet did, we had to architect our technology to be offline-first.
First, we loaded our app onto an Android tablet with 32GB of storage. We were able to store all the relevant data like names, photos, and loans locally on each device. The user, typically someone like a loan agent, doesn’t even need to know whether the tablet is online or offline, because the app behaves the same either way.
In the event of the internet dropping off, as soon as the tablet is reconnected to the internet, the data automatically syncs with our servers. That enables us to maintain data quality despite patchy internet.
Field officer taking photos of new M-Lady client using Gojo's DFA / Koh Terai
Challenge #2:
How do you enable field agents to update their Customer Forms on the fly to capture desired and customisable client data?
A critical piece of our Digital Field Application is to collect client information on tablets. This information is then used to make a decision on whether a client is eligible for a loan or not. These forms can vary widely depending on the data capture requirements of the partner. Keeping the fact in mind that the KYC forms could change on a regular basis, it did not make sense for us to go for a conventional route, i.e., to hardcode forms on the tablet itself.
We solved this problem by implementing the SDUI (Server Driven User Interface) architecture for our form screens. It works in conjunction with the offline architecture I mentioned above to render the latest version of the form to the client when the internet connectivity is present, or the latest cached version in the offline scenario.
It provided us the following benefits:
Partners no longer need to depend on mobile developers to update the app to show specific changes in forms or to change the order of the UI. An agent can now use a web portal to make any changes he/she wants in the forms and it would be reflected in the app instantly.
It’s easier for loan agents to introduce new form fields, like images and map views from their office computers and have it reflect on the mobile app.
It enables the engineering team to create more reusable form components and scale across partners, because we do not have to hardcode the forms for each of our partners.
As we continue to scale our Digital Field Application across Gojo partner companies, these solutions will evolve, but we're confident that our approach of immersive design and innovative development is the best way to yield technology that is as resilient and adaptive as the people in the places where it is meant to be used.
Jeet Dholakia works as part of Gojo's technology team as a software engineer, focusing particularly on mobile engineering. He is passionate about solving complex engineering problems and good mobile design, and is currently working on Gojo's Digital Field Application and Customer Mobile Application.
In today's digital world, physical cash is rapidly becoming a relic of traditional financial systems that have disadvantaged the unbanked. By combining mobile digital financial tools (such as mobile remittances and loan disbursal) with other money management tools (such as financial education), we believe unbanked people can access financial services and break out of the poverty cycle. At Gojo, we wish to include financially excluded people and enable them to achieve financial goals and self-sufficiency.
I joined Gojo as a Software Engineer in August 2020 to enable this mission and solve our mobile engineering challenges, of which there are many. I’m going to talk about two of these today.
Challenge #1:
How do you create a Digital Field Application system that works even if the cell tower is down?
Most of the time, we take internet access for granted. That’s not the case for our customers in many countries, where the internet can be patchy and a precious resource. In order to ensure that our DFA didn’t stop working when the internet did, we had to architect our technology to be offline-first.
First, we loaded our app onto an Android tablet with 32GB of storage. We were able to store all the relevant data like names, photos, and loans locally on each device. The user, typically someone like a loan agent, doesn’t even need to know whether the tablet is online or offline, because the app behaves the same either way.
In the event of the internet dropping off, as soon as the tablet is reconnected to the internet, the data automatically syncs with our servers. That enables us to maintain data quality despite patchy internet.
Field officer taking photos of new M-Lady client using Gojo's DFA / Koh Terai
Challenge #2:
How do you enable field agents to update their Customer Forms on the fly to capture desired and customisable client data?
A critical piece of our Digital Field Application is to collect client information on tablets. This information is then used to make a decision on whether a client is eligible for a loan or not. These forms can vary widely depending on the data capture requirements of the partner. Keeping the fact in mind that the KYC forms could change on a regular basis, it did not make sense for us to go for a conventional route, i.e., to hardcode forms on the tablet itself.
We solved this problem by implementing the SDUI (Server Driven User Interface) architecture for our form screens. It works in conjunction with the offline architecture I mentioned above to render the latest version of the form to the client when the internet connectivity is present, or the latest cached version in the offline scenario.
It provided us the following benefits:
Partners no longer need to depend on mobile developers to update the app to show specific changes in forms or to change the order of the UI. An agent can now use a web portal to make any changes he/she wants in the forms and it would be reflected in the app instantly.
It’s easier for loan agents to introduce new form fields, like images and map views from their office computers and have it reflect on the mobile app.
It enables the engineering team to create more reusable form components and scale across partners, because we do not have to hardcode the forms for each of our partners.
As we continue to scale our Digital Field Application across Gojo partner companies, these solutions will evolve, but we're confident that our approach of immersive design and innovative development is the best way to yield technology that is as resilient and adaptive as the people in the places where it is meant to be used.
Jeet Dholakia works as part of Gojo's technology team as a software engineer, focusing particularly on mobile engineering. He is passionate about solving complex engineering problems and good mobile design, and is currently working on Gojo's Digital Field Application and Customer Mobile Application.
Last March, I conducted two weeks of ethnographic field research in rural Cambodia with the local staff at our partner company Maxima.
Aside from learning about the villagers and their behaviours around money, I also tried to understand their relationship with technology.
During my research, I observed one phenomenon that surprised me.
Many of the homes I visited had mysterious numbers written on their ceilings. They were written with permanent marker, or etched into the wood. I was baffled by what they were.
Mysterious numbers written and scratched into the ceiling of a home in Banteay Meas, Cambodia / Koh Terai
Can you guess what they are?
It turns out that they are phone numbers of contacts that are important to them — doctors, police, their family members, and relatives.
The baffling part is that these people all owned feature phones, and some of them even owned smartphones.
So naturally I asked them, “why don’t you put these numbers into your phone?”
Their responses made me smile.
“I don’t know how to register numbers into my phone, I only know how to receive calls”.
“My phone is in English and besides, I can’t read”
“If I lose my phone, I would lose my data.”
“If the numbers stay in the phone, they sometimes get deleted. They never move if they are on the ceiling.”
“My phone is in English and besides, I can’t read”
I felt enlightened after hearing their responses. It became clear to me how their relationships to their mobile devices are quite different from the relationship I have with my smartphone.
For me, this leads to other interesting questions we could ask like… - What are their relationships with their mobile devices like? - How would that influence their relationship to mobile apps? - Does this behaviour tell us anything about the strengths of social ties in these communities? - Are there clues we can derive from the way people use spatial memory to organize information?
“I got this phone 2 years ago. I don’t know how to use the phone. I only receive calls. I only remember if the last two numbers are 27 it’s my first daughter, if its 20, it’s my second daughter.”
How many people do you know that store phone numbers on their ceilings at home?
Koh designs products and services for Gojo. He spends time listening to clients and potential customers to deliver well-intentioned financial and digital products for low-income households.
Last March, I conducted two weeks of ethnographic field research in rural Cambodia with the local staff at our partner company Maxima.
Aside from learning about the villagers and their behaviours around money, I also tried to understand their relationship with technology.
During my research, I observed one phenomenon that surprised me.
Many of the homes I visited had mysterious numbers written on their ceilings. They were written with permanent marker, or etched into the wood. I was baffled by what they were.
Mysterious numbers written and scratched into the ceiling of a home in Banteay Meas, Cambodia / Koh Terai
Can you guess what they are?
It turns out that they are phone numbers of contacts that are important to them — doctors, police, their family members, and relatives.
The baffling part is that these people all owned feature phones, and some of them even owned smartphones.
So naturally I asked them, “why don’t you put these numbers into your phone?”
Their responses made me smile.
“I don’t know how to register numbers into my phone, I only know how to receive calls”.
“My phone is in English and besides, I can’t read”
“If I lose my phone, I would lose my data.”
“If the numbers stay in the phone, they sometimes get deleted. They never move if they are on the ceiling.”
“My phone is in English and besides, I can’t read”
I felt enlightened after hearing their responses. It became clear to me how their relationships to their mobile devices are quite different from the relationship I have with my smartphone.
For me, this leads to other interesting questions we could ask like… - What are their relationships with their mobile devices like? - How would that influence their relationship to mobile apps? - Does this behaviour tell us anything about the strengths of social ties in these communities? - Are there clues we can derive from the way people use spatial memory to organize information?
“I got this phone 2 years ago. I don’t know how to use the phone. I only receive calls. I only remember if the last two numbers are 27 it’s my first daughter, if its 20, it’s my second daughter.”
How many people do you know that store phone numbers on their ceilings at home?
Koh designs products and services for Gojo. He spends time listening to clients and potential customers to deliver well-intentioned financial and digital products for low-income households.
The landscape of Hpa-an, Kayin State, Myanmar. / Taejun Shin
Myanmar’s financial services industry is nascent compared to the rest of the world, since the country only started to open up after the transition in 2011 from military rule to a civilian government. With the transition came liberalization of the financial services industry, with the Central Bank of Myanmar becoming an autonomous entity, and the enactment of the Microfinance business law in 2012. Since then, the industry has been playing catch up with the rest of the world, specifically in the area of mass market consumer lending.
Banks in Myanmar have traditionally served the corporate sector with credit, and have only recently started to slowly expand their reach into the SME sector, with a couple of non-traditional banks dipping their toes into consumer lending. The biggest obstacle banks face is the majority of the population’s lack of credit history. This creates a catch-22 for the risk-averse banking sector, who will not lend to consumers without credit history, but cannot build credit histories for consumers without taking the risk of lending in the first place. Microfinance institutions have been left to pick up where banks fell short in providing lending services to consumers, taking high risk, and building credit histories.
Microfinance in Myanmar started with the mission of getting people out of poverty and extending financial inclusion. The gap in the provision of mainstream financial services has led to the popularity of microfinance among the un/underserved credit-hungry populace. As a result, while maintaining its social mission, the microfinance sector has also grown to be a provider of mass market retail lending, ranging from consumer lending to micro/small business lending. Such rapid expansion in the lending scene has brought the need for credit scoring to the forefront, especially among the no/thin file segment of the population. This is where the sector’s years of trial and error in building the credit history of no/thin file clients can begin to bear fruit, as the sector starts to address the need for stronger credit scoring and risk management by building credit scorecards.
A lady selling flowers to visitors of Bagan, the most popular tourist destination in Myanmar. / Taejun Shin
Credit scorecards: An introduction
So, what is a credit scorecard?
It is the heart of credit scoring. It is a checklist of data points that are collected and weighted to spit out a score that we call a credit score, and financial institutions use this score to measure the risk level of a consumer. Consumers who have high credit scores are usually considered low-risk, while consumers on the other end of the spectrum, who have low credit scores, are considered high-risk.
The credit score and its associated risk level can decide whether a consumer gets approved for a loan, the pricing on the loan (risk-weighted pricing), and in some cases, even the loan amount and term. With credit scoring playing an important role in the decision-making process, the need to understand how the credit scorecard is made becomes critical.
A credit scorecard is created by looking at data on past loans that the institution has made so that it can extrapolate its experience of past loans to future consumers. To do this, they first need to classify consumers as either “good” or “bad”, and an analysis is carried out to explore and extract a set of characteristics that makes a borrower “good” or “bad”. In this scenario, the definition of a “bad” consumer, in hindsight, is any consumer to whom the institution would choose not to offer a loan again. There are two main types of scorecards for making such an analysis: an expert scorecard and a statistical scorecard.
Let us begin with the expert scorecard. It is the most basic credit scorecard and the most commonly used scorecard. As its name suggests, it is a scorecard made with inputs from an expert. People with years of experience in lending and credit appraisal make a list of characteristics to check and score for any consumers applying for the loan. This is a very manual process that relies on the personal experience of seasoned loan officers and credit managers in the case of microfinance, and of the underwriting team, in the case of banks.
The statistical scorecard does not draw on any personal experience but instead on statistics. The scorecard is built by using regression analysis to find correlations between data points collected from consumers and the performance of their past loans. This often means that an institution has collected hundreds, if not thousands, of data points from consumers and their past loans to find the correlations.
There is a midway approach, aptly called a hybrid scorecard. This is the combination of the two scorecards where the statistical scorecard is evaluated by experts to create a final version of the scorecard.
Creating a credit scorecard
Financial institutions that are looking to build a scorecard need to evaluate whether they have sufficient data points covering:
Transaction history (volume and amounts of deposits, withdrawals, cash ins, cash outs, and payments)
Saving history (balances in individual account or across all deposit accounts)
Demographics (age, gender, location, etc.)
Loan performance (number of times a consumer is late for previous loan instalments, number of days late for previous instalments, history of delinquency)
Income data (individual / consolidated debt to income ratio)
Relationship with the institution (how long the consumer has been with the institution, other products of the institution used by the consumer)
Alternative sources of data such as the credit bureau, call/text data, social media usage, etc.
The more data points, the better the statistical scorecard is. If the institution does not have access to or has not accumulated sufficient relevant data points, they can create an initial scorecard by using expert team members who have the experience to make judgement calls in lending, while gradually transitioning towards a statistical scorecard.
A restaurant owner providing buffet lunch for local people in Yangon City. / Taejun Shin
Transitioning to a statistical scorecard: The example of MIFIDA
The following is an example of one of Gojo’s partner companies, Microfinance Delta International (MIFIDA), and its journey to create a scorecard.
MIFIDA is a microfinance institution in Myanmar with around 150,000 customers and a portfolio of around $40 million. It was incorporated in 2013 but hit its stride in 2017, when it grew from a handful of branches to 60+ branches today. With such growth, the need to reevaluate its risk management policies and credit assessment became apparent. This in turn highlighted the need for a scorecard for its customers.
MIFIDA already had a scorecard for its MSME customers, but it was a basic expert scorecard that covered the usual characteristics such as: debt coverage ratio, the ratio of repayment amount to income, number of outstanding loans, age, years in the business receiving the loan, etc. But it did not have a scorecard for its mass market lending products, such as its group loans.
MIFIDA therefore set out to reevaluate its current MSME scorecard and to create a new scorecard from scratch for its group loans. Below, I will cover the re-evaluation and update of the MSME scorecard, and the challenges we encountered in the process. I hope to cover our journey toward creating a new scorecard for the group loans in a later post.
Relevant data is paramount for making a statistical scorecard, and this is exactly what MIFIDA did not have. It had only implemented its core banking system in recent months and even then, it only had transactional data going back as far as the data that had been migrated into the system. Despite being around seven years old, MIFIDA did not have digitised historical data on clients. There was also no guarantee that the digitised data was reliable.
This ruled out immediate creation of the statistical scorecard for MIFIDA, but as they had experts who have been making loan decisions for years now, they decided to create an expert scorecard based on the experience of their staff. They listed down everything that made a consumer “good” and “bad”. From that listing, the team trimmed it down to 14 specific characteristics that would be most telling of the customer’s behavior and provided the weightings on each characteristic to be scored. A new application form was then drafted so that the data needed for scoring could be captured.
Market-wide challenges in credit scoring
MIFIDA is using this new expert scorecard and application form as stepping stones toward a future statistical scorecard of its own. Apart from the lack of data points mentioned above, the current challenges that MIFIDA is facing in creating the statistical scorecard are:
A lack of data analysts and data scientists in Myanmar. Even if you have the data, there are few people in Myanmar with the skills to do the necessary analytics to build and produce the scorecard. It would require a person well versed in R or Python to handle large datasets, do exploratory data analysis, find correlations using regression or one of a few other methods, and then make a production-level scorecard that could be used in the field.
The lack of a credit bureau. Anyone who wants to double check a customer’s self-reported credit history will simply have to trust the consumer as there is no centralized database to check against. In recent years, MCIX (Myanmar Credit Info Exchange) has started to provide such a service to the microfinance sector, but it is still a nascent endeavour, as it currently only shows some of the loans that the customer has taken from other microfinance institutions, and sharing of delinquency data is still a work in progress. Until MCIX or the national credit bureau are fully-fledged, with the majority of financial institutions onboard, MIFIDA will have to check credit histories either by building these histories itself, or through traditional means such as asking family, relatives or local authorities.
Tying into the institutional lack of data is that most customers are no/thin file customers who are only just beginning to be financially included. This means that they are at the start of their journey to build a credit history with a formal financial institution. Building such histories takes time. On the other hand, it also presents an opportunity to financial service providers to get the data they want to collect from customers right, so that it can be processed and used for scoring in the future.
Financial institutions in Myanmar, MIFIDA included, are currently working on overcoming those challenges of building a statistical scorecard and transitioning from expert scorecards, as there is a whole world of new opportunities if the transition is successful.
An artisan who makes umbrellas in Pathein City. The town is known for umbrellas. / Taejun Shin
The rewards of better credit scoring
Myanmar has seen one example of an institution that is inching closer to a full statistical scorecard, and the opportunity this has provided to that institution.
The institution is Yoma Bank. Their digital lending product, called SMART Credit, is made for the mass market with a hybrid scorecard in the backend that is recalibrated every year with the help of Experian, one of the biggest providers of credit scoring and analytics in the world. This has helped Yoma Bank to expand its lending portfolio to everyday consumers and to a new market segment that it would not normally lend to due to the associated risk.
MIFIDA hopes to replicate that success by building its own customers’ credit history, while using an expert scorecard to mitigate the current risks until sufficient data is collected for a statistical scorecard. MIFIDA will also look to move onto digital lending and digitizing much of its operations so that its loan officers can focus more on building relationships with customers instead of focusing on application forms and transactions. Such digitization would allow for the collection of well-structured data points that could be used to move onto a statistical model, enabling MIFIDA to expand more easily to new customer segments with reduced risk in future by providing a comparable baseline for the new segment’s credit scoring.
Kaung Set Lin is Gojo's Country Officer for Myanmar, and has over 6 years of experience in Myanmar's financial sector, primarily focusing on developing and implementing digital financial products. His work includes managing the rollout of Gojo's digital products, including our Digital Field Application (DFA).
The landscape of Hpa-an, Kayin State, Myanmar. / Taejun Shin
Myanmar’s financial services industry is nascent compared to the rest of the world, since the country only started to open up after the transition in 2011 from military rule to a civilian government. With the transition came liberalization of the financial services industry, with the Central Bank of Myanmar becoming an autonomous entity, and the enactment of the Microfinance business law in 2012. Since then, the industry has been playing catch up with the rest of the world, specifically in the area of mass market consumer lending.
Banks in Myanmar have traditionally served the corporate sector with credit, and have only recently started to slowly expand their reach into the SME sector, with a couple of non-traditional banks dipping their toes into consumer lending. The biggest obstacle banks face is the majority of the population’s lack of credit history. This creates a catch-22 for the risk-averse banking sector, who will not lend to consumers without credit history, but cannot build credit histories for consumers without taking the risk of lending in the first place. Microfinance institutions have been left to pick up where banks fell short in providing lending services to consumers, taking high risk, and building credit histories.
Microfinance in Myanmar started with the mission of getting people out of poverty and extending financial inclusion. The gap in the provision of mainstream financial services has led to the popularity of microfinance among the un/underserved credit-hungry populace. As a result, while maintaining its social mission, the microfinance sector has also grown to be a provider of mass market retail lending, ranging from consumer lending to micro/small business lending. Such rapid expansion in the lending scene has brought the need for credit scoring to the forefront, especially among the no/thin file segment of the population. This is where the sector’s years of trial and error in building the credit history of no/thin file clients can begin to bear fruit, as the sector starts to address the need for stronger credit scoring and risk management by building credit scorecards.
A lady selling flowers to visitors of Bagan, the most popular tourist destination in Myanmar. / Taejun Shin
Credit scorecards: An introduction
So, what is a credit scorecard?
It is the heart of credit scoring. It is a checklist of data points that are collected and weighted to spit out a score that we call a credit score, and financial institutions use this score to measure the risk level of a consumer. Consumers who have high credit scores are usually considered low-risk, while consumers on the other end of the spectrum, who have low credit scores, are considered high-risk.
The credit score and its associated risk level can decide whether a consumer gets approved for a loan, the pricing on the loan (risk-weighted pricing), and in some cases, even the loan amount and term. With credit scoring playing an important role in the decision-making process, the need to understand how the credit scorecard is made becomes critical.
A credit scorecard is created by looking at data on past loans that the institution has made so that it can extrapolate its experience of past loans to future consumers. To do this, they first need to classify consumers as either “good” or “bad”, and an analysis is carried out to explore and extract a set of characteristics that makes a borrower “good” or “bad”. In this scenario, the definition of a “bad” consumer, in hindsight, is any consumer to whom the institution would choose not to offer a loan again. There are two main types of scorecards for making such an analysis: an expert scorecard and a statistical scorecard.
Let us begin with the expert scorecard. It is the most basic credit scorecard and the most commonly used scorecard. As its name suggests, it is a scorecard made with inputs from an expert. People with years of experience in lending and credit appraisal make a list of characteristics to check and score for any consumers applying for the loan. This is a very manual process that relies on the personal experience of seasoned loan officers and credit managers in the case of microfinance, and of the underwriting team, in the case of banks.
The statistical scorecard does not draw on any personal experience but instead on statistics. The scorecard is built by using regression analysis to find correlations between data points collected from consumers and the performance of their past loans. This often means that an institution has collected hundreds, if not thousands, of data points from consumers and their past loans to find the correlations.
There is a midway approach, aptly called a hybrid scorecard. This is the combination of the two scorecards where the statistical scorecard is evaluated by experts to create a final version of the scorecard.
Creating a credit scorecard
Financial institutions that are looking to build a scorecard need to evaluate whether they have sufficient data points covering:
Transaction history (volume and amounts of deposits, withdrawals, cash ins, cash outs, and payments)
Saving history (balances in individual account or across all deposit accounts)
Demographics (age, gender, location, etc.)
Loan performance (number of times a consumer is late for previous loan instalments, number of days late for previous instalments, history of delinquency)
Income data (individual / consolidated debt to income ratio)
Relationship with the institution (how long the consumer has been with the institution, other products of the institution used by the consumer)
Alternative sources of data such as the credit bureau, call/text data, social media usage, etc.
The more data points, the better the statistical scorecard is. If the institution does not have access to or has not accumulated sufficient relevant data points, they can create an initial scorecard by using expert team members who have the experience to make judgement calls in lending, while gradually transitioning towards a statistical scorecard.
A restaurant owner providing buffet lunch for local people in Yangon City. / Taejun Shin
Transitioning to a statistical scorecard: The example of MIFIDA
The following is an example of one of Gojo’s partner companies, Microfinance Delta International (MIFIDA), and its journey to create a scorecard.
MIFIDA is a microfinance institution in Myanmar with around 150,000 customers and a portfolio of around $40 million. It was incorporated in 2013 but hit its stride in 2017, when it grew from a handful of branches to 60+ branches today. With such growth, the need to reevaluate its risk management policies and credit assessment became apparent. This in turn highlighted the need for a scorecard for its customers.
MIFIDA already had a scorecard for its MSME customers, but it was a basic expert scorecard that covered the usual characteristics such as: debt coverage ratio, the ratio of repayment amount to income, number of outstanding loans, age, years in the business receiving the loan, etc. But it did not have a scorecard for its mass market lending products, such as its group loans.
MIFIDA therefore set out to reevaluate its current MSME scorecard and to create a new scorecard from scratch for its group loans. Below, I will cover the re-evaluation and update of the MSME scorecard, and the challenges we encountered in the process. I hope to cover our journey toward creating a new scorecard for the group loans in a later post.
Relevant data is paramount for making a statistical scorecard, and this is exactly what MIFIDA did not have. It had only implemented its core banking system in recent months and even then, it only had transactional data going back as far as the data that had been migrated into the system. Despite being around seven years old, MIFIDA did not have digitised historical data on clients. There was also no guarantee that the digitised data was reliable.
This ruled out immediate creation of the statistical scorecard for MIFIDA, but as they had experts who have been making loan decisions for years now, they decided to create an expert scorecard based on the experience of their staff. They listed down everything that made a consumer “good” and “bad”. From that listing, the team trimmed it down to 14 specific characteristics that would be most telling of the customer’s behavior and provided the weightings on each characteristic to be scored. A new application form was then drafted so that the data needed for scoring could be captured.
Market-wide challenges in credit scoring
MIFIDA is using this new expert scorecard and application form as stepping stones toward a future statistical scorecard of its own. Apart from the lack of data points mentioned above, the current challenges that MIFIDA is facing in creating the statistical scorecard are:
A lack of data analysts and data scientists in Myanmar. Even if you have the data, there are few people in Myanmar with the skills to do the necessary analytics to build and produce the scorecard. It would require a person well versed in R or Python to handle large datasets, do exploratory data analysis, find correlations using regression or one of a few other methods, and then make a production-level scorecard that could be used in the field.
The lack of a credit bureau. Anyone who wants to double check a customer’s self-reported credit history will simply have to trust the consumer as there is no centralized database to check against. In recent years, MCIX (Myanmar Credit Info Exchange) has started to provide such a service to the microfinance sector, but it is still a nascent endeavour, as it currently only shows some of the loans that the customer has taken from other microfinance institutions, and sharing of delinquency data is still a work in progress. Until MCIX or the national credit bureau are fully-fledged, with the majority of financial institutions onboard, MIFIDA will have to check credit histories either by building these histories itself, or through traditional means such as asking family, relatives or local authorities.
Tying into the institutional lack of data is that most customers are no/thin file customers who are only just beginning to be financially included. This means that they are at the start of their journey to build a credit history with a formal financial institution. Building such histories takes time. On the other hand, it also presents an opportunity to financial service providers to get the data they want to collect from customers right, so that it can be processed and used for scoring in the future.
Financial institutions in Myanmar, MIFIDA included, are currently working on overcoming those challenges of building a statistical scorecard and transitioning from expert scorecards, as there is a whole world of new opportunities if the transition is successful.
An artisan who makes umbrellas in Pathein City. The town is known for umbrellas. / Taejun Shin
The rewards of better credit scoring
Myanmar has seen one example of an institution that is inching closer to a full statistical scorecard, and the opportunity this has provided to that institution.
The institution is Yoma Bank. Their digital lending product, called SMART Credit, is made for the mass market with a hybrid scorecard in the backend that is recalibrated every year with the help of Experian, one of the biggest providers of credit scoring and analytics in the world. This has helped Yoma Bank to expand its lending portfolio to everyday consumers and to a new market segment that it would not normally lend to due to the associated risk.
MIFIDA hopes to replicate that success by building its own customers’ credit history, while using an expert scorecard to mitigate the current risks until sufficient data is collected for a statistical scorecard. MIFIDA will also look to move onto digital lending and digitizing much of its operations so that its loan officers can focus more on building relationships with customers instead of focusing on application forms and transactions. Such digitization would allow for the collection of well-structured data points that could be used to move onto a statistical model, enabling MIFIDA to expand more easily to new customer segments with reduced risk in future by providing a comparable baseline for the new segment’s credit scoring.
Kaung Set Lin is Gojo's Country Officer for Myanmar, and has over 6 years of experience in Myanmar's financial sector, primarily focusing on developing and implementing digital financial products. His work includes managing the rollout of Gojo's digital products, including our Digital Field Application (DFA).
Cheriel works on initiatives to measure and learn from the impact of Gojo’s partners’ products and services on our clients’ lives. She has a BA (Hons.) in History and English from Exeter College, Oxford University, and an MSc. in Translation Studies from the University of Edinburgh. Cheriel got started in the world of social impact during her time in Oxford, where she ran a homeless outreach, and helped found what would become a national student-led charity for social justice.
After graduating, she joined Social Finance, a social investment financial intermediary, where she designed Impact Bonds in the UK, Cameroon and the West Bank, and helped create an app to track young people’s outcomes after leaving state care. She is a founding director of Proof Bakery, a social enterprise training and employing refugee women in the UK.
In her spare time, Cheriel enjoys reading, snacking, and exploring her neighbourhood. She is an accomplished knitter and an avid home cook.
Ryo is a Certified Public Accountant and works at Gojo as a head of Accounting and FP&A. Ryo has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Keio University. While at university he passed the CPA exam, the youngest to do so that year. He did an internship at Ernst & Young Philippines, where one of his clients was a microfinance institution, and was impressed with the purpose of microfinance and its business model.
After graduating, he joined Ernst & Young in Tokyo, where he engaged in financial audits, internal control audits, operations/financial management advisory and financial due diligence for potential M&A. He also spent 2 years on secondment at the EY Los Angeles office, where he was in charge of supporting a unicorn startup company headquartered in the United States. He has experience auditing under IFRS, US-GAAP and J-GAAP.
Ryo is very fond of traveling, reading books, watching soccer and going to the sauna.
佐竹 亮
Head of Accounting & FP&A
2020年8月より五常・アンド・カンパニーに所属。同社でHead of Accounting and FP&Aを担当している。
数社の起業を経験の後、マッキンゼー・アンド・カンパニーの日本およびドイツを拠点に主に海外企業の経営支援に従事。その後、オックスフォード大学に移籍し、経営学の優等修士号と博士号を取得。立命館大学経営学部を経て、2016年より現職。専門は、経営戦略、国際経営、および、制度と組織の関係。慶應義塾大学政策・メディア研究科委員、上場企業を含む複数のスタートアップの社外役員を兼務。著書に『STARTUP優れた経営者は何を考え、どう行動したか』、『経営戦略原論』、『領域を超える経営学』、分担著に『Japanese Management in Evolution』などがある。
Haruna Tanaka
Head of Corporate Planning & PMI
Haruna is a professional with expertise in strategy, business development and incubation. She is the Head of Corporate Planning and PMI of Gojo, working on strategy development, post merger integration, corporate governance, social performance management, impact measurement, stakeholder impact management and any other projects that are needed to further enhance Gojo’s work.
Prior to Gojo, she worked for Rakuten, a Japanese internet services company for 10 years. As a member of the CEO’s office, she worked on special projects and other items on the CEO’s agenda, including acquisition of overseas companies, enrollment of Englishnization at Rakuten, strategy development of Rakuten Mobile and more. Amongst other things, she also led Rakuten’s ebook business as business manager in Japan and Taiwan, Asian business development, and innovation activities, including internal and external accelerator programs. Before Rakuten, she was a strategy consultant at Booz and Company. She graduated from Tokyo University majoring in Economics. She has lived 3 years in UK and a year in US in her childhood and is fluent in Japanese and English.
Outside of work, Haruna is a partner and board member of Social Venture Partners Tokyo, an NPO supporting seed stage social entrepreneurs to succeed. She is also a mother of 2 children, and enjoys reading and playing the flute.
Sohil Shah
Principal/Head of VC
Sohil graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a Masters in Finance and completed his under graduation in Electronics Engineering from the University of Mumbai. Before joining Gojo, Sohil was a part of the Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group where he led Intellecap Impact Investment Network, an early-stage angel network focused on making investments in social impact start-ups. In his five years with the group, he led around 35 investments in India and East Africa of which they exited from 6 companies and another 15 companies raised follow-on round of investment.
An Investment Banking professional with over six years of experience in India and US, Sohil previously worked as a Senior Analyst at Bank of America. He was part of the Global Investment Banking team, with a key focus on the healthcare sector, where he was a part of a few billion-dollar M&A transactions. Prior to that, he worked with the investment banking teams at Fortune Financial Services (India) Ltd and Crucible Capital Group in New York.
Apart from being an avid brewer, Sohil is an angel investor in his personal capacity as well. He lives in Pune with his family.
Gürol Michael Sari
Chief Operating Officer
Gürol Sari joined Gojo in June 2020 as our Chief Operating Officer, and oversees the strategic and operational development of our partner institutions. Gürol has extensive leadership experience in retail banking, SME finance, microfinance & financial digitalization, as well as experience in turnarounds of several institutions. He has worked in the banking sector for over 30 years in many countries, including Germany, Austria, Myanmar, Turkey, Albania, Russia, Australia, and Tanzania.
From the start of his career, his interest was drawn towards innovation and impact: Gürol created the first fully automated online credit solution in Germany, easyCredit, which is ranked No.1 today in Germany. Prior to joining Gojo, Gürol worked as Chief Operating Officer of Vision Fund Myanmar, where he developed and implemented a fully digitized microfinance system that provided over 300,000 clients in extreme poverty with access to credit, savings, and education. He currently advises several international banks on digitization and change processes.
Gürol has a creative spirit and is always active. He is passionate about architecture, gardening, handicraft (particularly remodeling houses), and loves to bike and to play tennis. He dreams of sailing with his wife once his two children are independent.
Takao Takahashi
Chief People & Inclusion Officer
At Gojo, Takao leads corporate planning and HR. Before joining Gojo, Takao was an Investment Officer at International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, based in both Washington DC and Jakarta. In his 7 years with IFC, he led investments in microfinance institutions, banks and fintech startups in emerging markets. Before IFC, Takao worked as the Bhutan Prime Minister’s Fellow, developing microfinance regulations and financial inclusion policy to contribute to Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH). He also worked for 4 years as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company based in Frankfurt and Tokyo.
Takao graduated from Georgetown University, USA, with a Master of Science in Foreign Service and completed his Bachelor of Laws from Kyoto University, Japan.
Takao loves singing, both opera and karaoke. Tennis is his favorite sport. He has authored a book in Japanese, the English translation of the title being; ‘What is true happiness? Thoughts from Bhutan’
Kohei Katada
Managing Partner & CFO
Prior to joining Gojo, Kohei has served as Senior Vice President of Finance at SmartNews, Inc., a developer of a news discovery app. As its 7th employee and part of its management team, he led $80 million of equity financing and undertook a wide range of responsibilities including financial control, accounting, recruiting, people operations, legal, and investor relations.
As one of the founding members and as Chief Financial Officer at LIFENET INSURANCE COMPANY, a leading online life insurer in Japan, Kohei led it’s successful $100 million Initial Public Offering in 2012, and also setup a joint venture in Korea.
Kohei started his career at Morgan Stanley in its Investment Banking Division, where he was involved in multiple cross-border M&A transactions. In 2005, he moved to Hong Kong and joined Och-Ziff Capital Management, a global asset management company.
Kohei has a B.A. in Law from the University of Tokyo. While at school, he did an internship at a local NGO in Bangladesh where he was inspired by the power of microfinance that can unlock the potential of micro-entrepreneurs.
Kohei enjoys playing with his two boys over the weekends. He loves sports and has successfully finished the long-distance triathlon.
Arnaud Ventura
Managing Partner
Arnaud has founded and led two of the leading European financial inclusion groups active in Micro and SME finance, as well as digital finance.
Between 1998 and 2008, Arnaud cofounded and led PlaNet Finance with the support of Jacques Attali (Chairman) and Muhammed Yunus (Chairman Advisory Board). It was one of the most successful European financial inclusion groups, providing mainly advisory services in the sector. Between 2008 and 2019, Arnaud founded & led Baobab (formerly MicroCred), the leading Micro&SME digital bank in Africa & China. In 2019 alone, Baobab lent $1 billion to 1 million clients, generating around $200 million total revenues and more than $40 million pre-tax profit.
Arnaud is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. He also cofounded the French China Foundation, the leading network of Young Leaders between France and China, and Share Africa, a platform to promote Africa’s innovation and creativity. Arnaud graduated from EFREI, Paris, in Computer Science, and La Sorbonne in Philosophy. He speaks French, English and Spanish fluently and loves reading history & philosophy. He loves skiing and hiking in the mountains (particularly in the South of France), and has 2 young boys.
Akira Kawashiro
Outside Director
Akira Kawashiro is an attorney qualified to practice both Japanese law and Illinois law, currently serving as a Partner at Southgate, a law firm in Tokyo. His practice primarily focuses on domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), venture capital investments, and securities regulations. He has also been seconded to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and has a deep knowledge of disclosure regulations.
Akira began his career in 2013 at Mori Hamada & Matsumoto, where he engaged in domestic and cross-border M&A and antitrust matters. At Gojo, Akira monitors management from an independent standpoint through board and committee meetings as an Outside Director.
Taejun Shin
Founder, Managing Partner & CEO
Taejun cofounded Gojo in 2014 and has led the company’s growth until today as the CEO. Before Gojo, Taejun worked as an investment professional at Morgan Stanley and Unison Capital. To deal with an enormous number of investment projects, Taejun studied programming and automated many financial models, some of which are used even today.
While working in the sector, Taejun founded Living in Peace, an NGO, in 2007 and created the first microfinance investment fund in Japan. Taejun has been involved in Japan’s child foster care for more than a decade and co-established Japan Office for Standards on Children Services in 2021 to conduct third-party inspections on the local authority children services in Japan.
Taejun is the Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and is the youngest founding board member of Endeavor Japan. He is an author of 10 books, a finisher of the 1648 km ultra-marathon, and a Karate black-belt holder (he just recently started Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and owns a blue belt as of 2022). Taejun is fluent in Japanese, Korean, and English. He plays drums and loves shooting street photos of the world.
Masahiro Kotosaka
Outside Director
Masahiro Kotosaka is Professor at Keio University, an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and a non-executive director of Gojo & Company since March 2017. He is an expert in Internationalization strategy and early stage business development, and advisor/non-executive director of several start-up/multinational companies.
Before moving to Keio, he was an associate professor of multinational management at Ritsumeikan University, a teaching & research associate at the University of Oxford, and a consultant at McKinsey & Company based in Frankfurt and Tokyo. As a practitioner, he worked for strategy/marketing projects with sixteen client organizations across nine industries and nine countries and spent four years running three profitable IT/Retail businesses before joining McKinsey.
He graduated from the University of Oxford with D.Phil. (Ph.D) in Management Studies and MSc in Management Research with Distinction. His recent publication includes STARTUP (Co-authored, NewsPicks Publishing, 2020), The Element of Strategic Management (Toyo Keizai, 2018), and The Japanese Business in Evolution (Co-authored, Routledge, 2017).
Royanne Doi
Outside Director
Royanne Doi is the former Corporate Chief Ethics Officer of Prudential Financial Inc., and former Advisor for Global Legal, Ethics & Compliance to Yamaha Corporation.
Prior to Yamaha, Royanne held senior legal positions with major global financial institutions. At one point, she managed 200+ staff around the world, with business experience in North and South America, Asia, and Europe. During her tenure as a global ethics officer, Prudential Financial received Ethisphere’s designation as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for the first time in 2015, and multiple times thereafter. As a member of Gojo’s board, she will further accelerate the strengthening of internal audit and corporate governance to enable the sustainable growth of Gojo group.
Royanne has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, from Washington University in St. Louis, graduating Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. She is married to her law school sweetheart and has lived in Japan since 1994. She has three passions: economic empowerment for women, Asia with an emphasis on Japan, and the intersection between neuroscience and behavioral ethics.
投資銀行業務の専門家。以前はBank of Americaにシニアアナリストとして勤務していた。グローバル投資銀行チームに所属し、ヘルスケア分野に重点を置き、数十億ドル規模のM&A取引に関与。それ以前は、インドのFortune Financial Services LtdとNYのCrucible Capital Groupの投資銀行チームに所属していた。
キャリアをスタートさせた当初から、イノベーションとインパクトに関心があり、現在ドイツ1位にランクインする初の完全自動化オンラインクレジットソリューション、easyCreditを開発。五常入社以前は、Vision Fund MyanmarのCOOとして、完全デジタル化されたマイクロファイナンスシステムを開発・導入し、貧困顧客30万人以上にローン、預金、教育へのアクセスを提供。現在は、デジタル化と変革のプロセスについて、いくつかの銀行にアドバイスをしている。
Jacques Attaliとムハマド・ユヌスの支援を受け、プラネットファイナンスを共同設立し、世界中でアドバイザリーサービスを提供。またアフリカ9カ国と中国でBaobab（旧MicroCred）を設立・CEOとして主導。退職前の2019年にBaobabは100万人の顧客に10億ドルを貸し出し、約2億ドルの総収益と4000万ドル以上の経常利益を創出。
世界経済フォーラムのヤング・グローバル・リーダーであり、the French China FoundationとShare Africaの共同設立者でもある。パリのEFREIでコンピュータサイエンスを、La Sorbonneで哲学を学んだ。フランス語、英語、スペイン語を流暢に話し、歴史と哲学を愛する。スキーとハイキングが好きな二児の父。
堅田 航平
執行役CFO
大学在学中にバングラデシュのNGOにおけるリサーチ・インターンを通じて、マイクロファイナンスの可能性と課題を認識。大学卒業後、インドの英文校正スタートアップの立ち上げに関与したのち、モルガン・スタンレー証券 投資銀行本部においてM&Aアドバイザリー業務に従事。Och-Ziff Capital Management(Hong Kong)を経て、2008年にライフネット生命保険に入社し、経営管理、事業開発、組織開発、韓国におけるJV設立などを担当。IPO準備の責任者として同社を東証マザーズ上場に導き、執行役員CFOに就任。
ミレーナは、スタートアップ向けアドバイザーのTherion Advisersの共同創業者兼Managing Partner、気候変動の課題解決に取り組む革新的なソリューションに投資するグローバル・ベンチャーキャピタルであるAera VCのVenture Partner、ベンチャーキャピタルAntlerのVenture Partnerを務めています。以前はロンドンでUBSグループ投資銀行部門のExecutive Director、シンガポールのウェルスマネジメントのコンサルタントを歴任。慈善活動にも力を注いでおり、複数のNGOの創設者やパートナー。米国証券アナリスト。London School of EconomicsでInternational Accounting and Financeの修士号を取得。
金融機関で働くかたわら、2007年にLiving in Peaceを設立し(2017年に理事長退任)、日本初のマイクロファイナンス投資ファンドを企画した。過去15年以上にわたり社会的養育を受ける子どもの支援に携わっており、2021年に日本児童相談業務評価機関を共同設立した。
単著は10冊。日本縦断1648kmウルトラマラソン完走。空手黒帯、ブラジリアン柔術青帯(2022年時点)。世界経済フォーラムのYoung Global Leader 2018選出。朝鮮大学校法律学科、早稲田大学大学院ファイナンス研究科卒。趣味はストリート写真を撮ること。時々バンドでドラムを叩く。
Haruna’s Story
Why did you join Gojo? Since the beginning of my career I had wanted to spend my time on supporting people in developing countries. However, I ended up starting my career as a strategy consultant. After 3 years, I joined Rakuten, a Japan-based internet services company, where I worked mainly at the CEO office as an internal consultant. There were many interesting projects and I really enjoyed my time there, but I couldn’t give up on my original aspiration. After spending 10 years at Rakuten I decided to shift my career to pursue my personal mission. You can read more about my career here.
What does a day in your life look like? A typical day will be like this: 0700-0900 : Time with kids – breakfast, send them off to school, dish washing, laundry etc 0930-1200 : Start working at home. Morning is usually more quiet and I get time to do analysis, write / read reports etc. (if I’m lucky) 1200-1300 : Lunch 1300-1800 : Meetings with Gojo team members, group company counterparts, executive committees and board meetings 1800-2000 : Time with kids – dinner, bath, homework etc 2000-2200 : Not everyday but sometimes late night meetings, some additional work to be done
What do you find challenging and rewarding about your job? The best part is the people you work with. It is amazing to work with really talented people who share the same values and the goal to achieve a social mission. Everyone is very kind and empathetic, while being super professional. I also like the flat and open culture – you are encouraged to dissent without fear, almost all information is disclosed to everyone so transparency is quite high, very little hierachy. The challenges are workload management and distance with the clients. Being a startup there is always so much work that needs to be done, while as a working mother there is only limited time I can spend, so it sometimes becomes difficult. Being in Japan, it is sometimes difficult to provide effective support to clients in a timely manner. Having said that I feel that the challenges are possible to overcome with the great team members.
A word for prospective team members I think it was one of my best decisions I made in my life to come to Gojo. I am sure you will feel the same too.
Why did you join Gojo? Prior to joining Gojo, I worked with one of India’s largest impact investing groups covering many sectors like healthcare, financial services, agriculture, education etc. After 5 years, I felt the need to build deep expertise in a particular area so as to make a meaningful contribution. With financial inclusion as its core theme, Gojo not only gave me an opportunity to work directly on the field but also think about how I can make real impact.
What does a day in your life look like? Even after a few years at Gojo, my days are still intellectually stimulating! Typically I have a bunch of calls/meetings on various issues – building investment pipelines, negotiating new investments, managing group companies, etc. Initially it did look overwhelming, but I like the fact that it gives me an opportunity to cover multiple facets related to building a strong foundation for the group. There are also a lot of casual chats with colleagues between meetings which make for a fun day!
What do you find challenging and rewarding about your job? The only challenge I see at Gojo is our remote style of working. Throughout my career, I have worked with colleagues co-located in a physical office so this was definitely new to me. But the rewards outweigh the challenges and make it all worthwhile. The opportunity to understand the hardships of our clients, experience their lives, and constantly strive to make them better keeps me going. You feel that you’re making a dent in the universe, in your own small way, and that feeling has been very satisfying for me.
A word for prospective team members Despite the large scale, Gojo still operates like a start-up. If you want to make a difference to the society while working in a flat organization with a high level of ownership, then this is the place for you!
Why did you join Gojo? I’ve always been passionate about working at the intersection of social impact and business, so impact investing felt like a natural starting point for my career. What drew me specifically to Gojo was its hands-on involvement with its group companies. This allows Gojo to go beyond financial returns and actively extend its impact to reach more people, which really resonated with me.
What does a day in your life look like? Everyday is always different! I usually head to the Tokyo office in the morning to catch up on emails, Slack messages, and conduct analysis work. In the afternoon-evening, when colleagues in India, Europe, and our group companies start their workday, I shift to meetings. One of the perks of being in the office is the chance to have coffee breaks with the Tokyo team between tasks 🙂
What do you find challenging and rewarding about your job? The fast-paced environment is both the most challenging and most rewarding part of the job. Every day brings new developments across different teams and group companies. What truly makes it rewarding though, is hearing firsthand from clients about how Gojo’s services have made a difference in their lives.
A word for prospective team members If you are someone who wants to grow while contributing to something bigger than yourself, I am sure you will enjoy your time at Gojo as much as I do.
Milena has over 25 years of finance experience spanning across investment banking, wealth management, venture capital investing and startup advisory. She is a strong believer that directing capital for impact can be a powerful force for good without compromising financial returns.
Milena is Partner at Antares Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm taking a strategic approach to investing globally in breakthrough innovations that address sustainability challenges in Asia’s Growth Markets. She is co-chair of the Climate Solutions Committee at the Singapore Venture & Private Capital Association. She is also involved in several philanthropic initiatives and is a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Clean Air Fund, a leading non-profit at the intersection of climate and health.
Prior to that she was Partner at Aera VC and focused on investing in transformative technologies to reverse climate change. In her earlier career as Executive Director at UBS Investment Bank in London, Milena advised leading financial institutions on mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs with over $10bn in deal value. In Singapore, she worked in UBS wealth management, advising ultra-high-net-worth individuals on asset allocation, wealth planning, and corporate structuring.
Milena holds a MSc Degree in International Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics.
Kshama Fernandes
Outside Director
Kshama has three decades of experience in Capital Markets, Risk Management and Structured Finance, with the last 15 years focussed on the financial inclusion space in India. Respected for her knowledge and commitment towards the cause of unleashing the power of finance for the greater good, Kshama has been a member of various High Powered Committees setup by the Government of India and has worked on consulting assignments for the World Bank, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, and NSEIT. Through her innovative and pioneering work, she has been instrumental in creating and developing the market for debt for the underbanked in India. Kshama is recognised as a leading figure in the Indian financial markets, and in the world of impact investing. She is also the Vice Chairperson of the Northern Arc Group, a leading finance company in India that invests and connects underbanked institutions and businesses to capital markets investors.
She has a bachelors in Mathematics, a Masters in Management and a Ph.D. in Finance. An adventure sports enthusiast, Kshama is a trained mountaineer, sailor, sky diver and an ardent biker.
Almira Zejnilagic
Outside Director
Almira has two decades of experience in risk and crisis strategy management, having worked as an advisor, board member and management, as well as having extensive Investment Committee experience. Most recently she was a senior executive in a global, fast-growing Web 3 financial services business and previously a Partner at FTI Consulting where she spent a decade and helped build and ran Global Risk and Investigation Practic in Europe, Central Asia and Africa.
During her formative years, as a Bosnian refugee, Almira experienced challenges relating to remittances and access to finance, which later shaped her keen interest in finacial inclusion and digital finance as well as broader issues of social justice.
Almira is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. She speaks English, Serbo-Croatian and Russian (as well as some basic Tajik). She enjoys reading and cooking with her family.
Ignacio Mas-Ribo
Outside Director
Ignacio is a non-executive director at Gojo & Company, Senior Fellow at the Fletcher School’s Council on Emerging Market Enterprises at Tufts University, and an independent consultant.
During 2015-2020, Ignacio was co-founder and executive director at the Digital Frontiers Institute, a not-for-profit that develops professional development training courses around digital money and payments. Previously, he was Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Senior Advisor at the Technology Program at CGAP. I have been Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, Executive VP of Marketing and Account Management at DoCoMo interTouch, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe for Intel Capital.
Ignacio has undergraduate degrees in maths and economics from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard University. He has been Adjunct Professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.
Sanjay Gandhi
Co-founder, Managing Partner & CIO
Sanjay co-founded Gojo in 2014 as Gojo’s Chief Investment Officer and has led the Investment Division since then. Apart from recommending the investments to be made by Gojo, he also represents Gojo on the Board and Committees of the partner entities and contributes actively towards strengthening the governance at the partner level.
Sanjay qualified as a Chartered Accountant (CPA) before graduating from Delhi University. After his first job as an Audit Manager in India in early 1990s, he led the Corporate Banking (North India) team for a Finance company.
Sanjay joined the microfinance industry in 2003 and has been part of it ever since: conducted about 125 MFI ratings & assessments in 29 countries; approved more than 400 MFI Rating reports. Some of the assignments were for the World Bank, ADB, UNDP, Cordaid and Mercy Corps. After his CEO assignment at a Cambodian MFI in 2013, Sanjay and Taejun got together to set up Gojo, where Sanjay’s extensive experience in the microfinance sector has been invaluable.
Sanjay operates from India, where he stays with his wife and two daughters. He speaks English, Hindi, and Punjabi. Loves reading; movies; and music. “The Beatles” is his all-time favourite music band.
Customers
Our key focus is our net positive impact on our clients through financial inclusion, something enshrined in our corporate mission. This continuous effort is reflected in our score in the “Customers” category, by far the highest in our assessment with 50.6 points overall, out of a maximum of 80. We are not satisfied yet: our work to further improve how we serve and support our clients is detailed in the impact reports we publish every year.
Kannan
Respondent Kannan, aged 30, married, a fisherman who lives with his family. He sends his children to private schools. He had lived on small-sized informal loans in 2022 during the economic crisis, when Sri Lanka experienced a significant currency depreciation and sharp price increases.
In early 2023, he repaired his fishing boat and purchased fishing nets through a local microfinance institution. He shares that the fishing nets need to be changed twice or thrice per year and the financial services help in his business continuity. He is also a participant of ROSCA (Rotating Savings and Credit Association) and his income has seen an increase since mid-2023. He faces financial setbacks when his boat engine fails and he depends on his relatives for immediate cash to meet the household needs in times of emergencies.
In the photo, Kannan stands beside his boat and fishing nets.
Jessy
Respondent Jessy, aged 37, is divorced and a mother of two children. She lives in her mother’s house and earns through tailoring where the sewing machine and other tailoring equipment were purchased through a local microfinance institution.
She manages her household needs through occasional alimony from her ex-husband, Samurdhi government benefits and support from close relatives. She keeps monthly shop credit for basic food and grocery expenses and repays the following month. She wants to earn more and focuses on her tailoring skills. Jessy desires to build her own house in the future.
In the photo, Jessy sits next to her newly purchased sewing machine.
We counted the monthly income for each household in the Cambodia Diaries and aggregated the frequencies based on magnitude. The leftmost bar represents the number of months with no recorded income. Levels ranging from less than USD 10 to around USD 70 were the most frequently observed income levels. We can also see that as income increases, its frequency decreases.
This graph shows how the diarists borrow from financial institutions like microfinance institutions and banks for larger loan sizes and in less frequency, and how they borrow from relatives and individual lenders for smaller sized loans.
This is the total number and cumulative amount of all transactions recorded in the Cambodia Diaries. All transactions have been categorised into four quadrants. You can see various sources of income and expenses, as well as the inflows and outflows from financial or asset transactions.
This graph represents the count of expenses for each household in the Cambodia Diaries for over a monthly period, aggregated by magnitude. There were no instances of zero expenses over a month. Levels ranging from less than USD 50 to around USD 90 were the most common expense levels. Compared to the income distribution, the distribution of expenses is more skewed. It suggests that expenses are necessary even when there is no income; in cases of substantial income, some of it is saved instead of spent.
Respondent Prema, aged 33, a housewife and a mother of 3 children, lives with her spouse. Her spouse is a driver and her 13-year-old helps record daily cash flow in the financial diary.
The household purchased a piece of land through a local institution and has done house repairs in phases by pawning gold goods. The loan repayments, utility bills, school and tuition fees are the recurring high expenditures in 2023. In January 2024, they invested in a small business towards fragrant agarwood plants. The household aims towards varied objectives balancing monthly income and expenditures.
In the photo, Prema stands on her purchased land with construction materials.
Chandri
Respondent Chandri, a housewife, aged 33, lives with her spouse, two children and parents. Her spouse is a carpenter and she participates in ‘Equipment Seettu’ where regular deposits are made to a shop and by the end of the stipulated period, she receives household goods. Seettu is a group saving method practiced among Sinhalese men and women, and it operates through friends and social circles in the community. In this case, it is probably in collaboration with the seller of these pots.
She has a children’s bank account where she tries to save, though not regularly. The household had utilized small-sized loans from welfare societies and local lenders for the consumption / purchase of household goods. Chandri shares that managing the medical expenses of the parents is hard to get by, yet the financial diary helps to cut unnecessary expenses and save for emergencies.
In the photo, Chandri carries her new cooking utensils (equipment seettu).
