In our world today, and particularly in recent times, we are constantly reminded of the basic economic problem – scarcity of resources. The problem stems, not from the absence of resources but from its uneven distribution. As such, the role of financial intermediation, which attempts to equilibrate the demand and supply of funds in the economy cannot be overemphasized.
At Letshego Ghana we are committed to providing financial services to the underserved in the economy and this commitment has taken on added importance in light of the ongoing pandemic because of our brand promise – Improving lives.
A multi-faceted pandemic
In 2019, Letshego had witnessed a 70% spike in year on year revenue and there was every reason to look forward to 2020 with optimism. Little did we anticipate, that the world would experience a roller coaster of a year the way it did.
Many industries continue to be affected in the most unfortunate ways. The transport, hospitality and educational industries have borne the brunt of the pandemic above all and their respective value chains, as well as the financial institutions that support them have not been spared either. In Ghana for instance, it became evidently clear, that the economy will hit rock bottom if the lock down was not lifted.
The ravages of the pandemic notwithstanding, business at Letshego continued without many disruptions throughout 2020. The years prior to 2020 had witnessed a steady progress towards digitization of our internal and customer facing processes.
Our customers are able to apply for loans and make service requests through a myriad of digital channels. We have at various times in years prior, simulated working from home and from numerous locations across the country. As the lock down took effect, our business continuity protocols were fully activated. 90% of our staff worked from home and we could process 10,000 customer loan and service requests daily.
Customer is still King
If there is one important lesson that every business has learnt especially in these trying times then it the fact that the Customer has, is, and will always be King. We are all witnesses to how businesses have collapsed because customers could no longer patronize their services due to movement restrictions or lock downs. If you take care of your customers and give them ways to reach you, they will want nowhere to go.
At Letshego, we have been constantly seeking ways to make life easier for the customer. This desire underpins our drive to digitize and operationalize channels and approaches that makes customer engagement a breeze. This year, we are completely eliminating all paper-based loan applications for schools. It will now be 100% online.
In 2020, Our school clients for example were on repayment holiday for most part of the year. A number of schools received support to pay teachers as schools were shut down. We waived penal fees and charges for over 120,000 mobile loan customers to enable them pay on time and we reduced interest rates for salary loan clients to ensure they had enough to cater for urgent and much required household expenses. It worked.
2021 and beyond
We are ready for the year ahead. Our focus for the year is to listen to our customers some more and introduce products that cater for unmet needs. Our growing economy still has large swathes of opportunities and underserved segments and those are the needs we will seek to meet this year.
Letshego @ 10 Years
We are still in our 10th anniversary celebration mode. We will be engaging the public in various fora to share our vision of how a financially included Ghana could look like. We look forward to sharing the Letshego story with the rest of the world. It is the story of an African company ton a journey to become a world class retail financial services Institution.
Arnold Parker, MD of Letshego Ghana
