The Osun State Chapter of the National Association of Microfinance Banks on Friday organized a-day seminar on lending for members of staff of Microfinance Banks across the State.
The workshop, which was held at the Secretariat of the association in Osogbo, had “Pragmatic lending procedures for optimal income generation in Nigerian Microfinance Banks as its theme.
Over 50 staff of Microfinance Banks drawn from the three senatorial districts were trained extensively on ways to avoid litigation, defaults and proper documentation in credit management.
According to the organizers of the event, the workshop was aimed at ensuring that participants identify profitable processes of lending, minimize delinquency, be familiar with importance of credit documentation among other objectives.
Speaking with InsightMedia, the Vice Chairman of NAMB, Alhaji Tunde Lawal said the association is poised to build capacity of its staff for quality service delivery. Lawal, who represented the state Chairman at the event, added that the workshop is a quarterly event and this is the first of its kind in 2021.
The Vice Chairman, while speaking of the challenges facing Microfinance Banks in the country, said the problems have three branches, which according to him are government policies, defaulting nature of customers and the low knowledge on the part of staff, adding that the last is being addressed by the workshop.
He said, “the main problem is the government policies. Recently, the Central Bank of Nigeria had directed all MFBs to shore up their capital into #50million for unit in d rural areas while #100million for unit MFBs located in d State Capitals. While #1billion for State MFBs & #5billion for National MFBs. He appealed for reduction & extension of d period till 2025. This puts more burden on the operations of the banks. To compound it, the federal government is also creating Microfinance Banks that are being run on grants. Thereby, creating inequality in the system.
“Also, the banks have not recover fully from the impact of COVID-19 on our operations. We all know that in the whole of 2020, we shut our offices for several months during pandemic and our customers also suffered similar fate. We call on the government to slow on the implementation of these policies to allow us recover from COVID-19. At least wait till mid 2022.”
Also speaking, one of the resource persons, Dr Rasheed Abdullahi commended NAMs for taking the capacity building of their staff as priority, stating that “credit officers are integral to Microfinance Banks as they hold very integral department in the bank. They must be trained and retrained to ensure there are at the top of their assignment.”
In their respective speeches, two of the participants, Mrs Tayo Eluwole of the Ospoly Microfinance Bank Iree and Mr Adeniji Adeyemi of OMAK MFB described the workshop as benefiting and educating. They said it will help them in discharge of their duties better than before.
