Monica Brand has spent her career in the financial services and social enterprise sectors, expanding and enhancing the value offered to the majority. Ms. Brand currently manages ACCION’s Frontier Investments, whose mandate is to invest in early stage companies with disruptive business models that catalyze breakthrough innovation in financial inclusion.

OK. Let’s imagine you are the executive director, or perhaps the chief technology officer, of a strong growing MFI. Suppose you know you need to invest in some software, to replace those spreadsheets you are using to track your loan portfolio. You look around for options.  There are some pretty slick core banking systems, but they’re pretty much overkill for what you need if you’re not actually a regulated banking institution.

Those systems are very expensive and are probably sold by a company on the other side of the world that offers limited local support. You could look for a local software firm and ask them to build a custom solution for you. But the company you select might not have any experience in microfinance. And they probably can’t give you a reliable estimate of what it will cost you. And they may not be around later when you need to update the application they build for you.  Finally, you could hire your own team and do the whole project in house.  But what happens when the project is complete or a few years down the road when you need to build in new functionality or scale up beyond the current capacity?

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