JUMO’s partnership with Ecobank and Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) in Ghana is a natural fit.
Ecobank operates in thirty-three (33) African countries and, like JUMO, was born out of a desire to serve the financial needs of all Africans.
“You cannot talk about serving Africa effectively without considering the masses and ensuring you are able to reach people that conventional banking cannot get to,” says Dr. Edward Botchway, Regional Head of Consumer Banking (Anglophone West Africa) and Executive Director of Ecobank Ghana.
“For us, financial inclusion has always been a key part of our strategy. Our partnership with JUMO and MTN offers us the most effective platform to be able to fulfil what’s been our mandate from the very beginning,” he says.
Since setting out to reach the underbanked and unbanked of Ghana together, the partnership has enabled each party to do what they’re meant to be doing. “We’ve reached over 2.9 million customers together, and disbursed over 14.7 million individual loans,” says Ecobank’s Head of Direct Banking, William Danso-Abeam. “It would not have been possible to reach this target alone, with our regular banking product,” he says.
The partnership has had a tremendous impact on the lives of everyday Ghanaians. Close to 80% of customers accessing JUMO’s loan products have no credit history and 90% of these customers go on to become repeat customers, which helps them to build a credit history.
The partnership delivers large scale digital financial services to low-income customers and entrepreneurs. Nearly 50% of customers are poor (defined as earning less than $5/day) and 20% are the ultra-poor (earning less than $2/day). Of the customer base, 60% also report that they are micro enterprises.
Our ability to be able to deliver on the needs of this segment is important. We are convinced that together with JUMO as our partners, there is enough skill and know-how to be able to progress forward and evolve to address customer needs and new opportunities as they come up.
Dr Edward Botchway
