How does a community lift itself out of poverty? One increasingly popular method is through microfinance: small loans, provided by a mix of donors and financial institutions, are given to those without access to traditional capital to help kickstart business ventures. These loans have a tangible impact on members of struggling communities, often causing a ripple effect that lifts up more and more people over time. This life-changing impact sits at the heart of Care Australia’s mission: delivering targeted microfinance support to women in underserved communities to help make their ambitions a reality.
How does a community lift itself out of poverty? One increasingly popular method is through microfinance: small loans, provided by a mix of donors and financial institutions, are given to those without access to traditional capital to help kickstart business ventures. These loans have a tangible impact on members of struggling communities, often causing a ripple effect that lifts up more and more people over time. This life-changing impact sits at the heart of Care Australia’s mission: delivering targeted microfinance support to women in underserved communities to help make their ambitions a reality.
But setting up the infrastructure to facilitate these loans comes with its own set of challenges, from security and compliance to balancing the needs of individual lenders and larger institutions. In this episode of Transformation @ Work, we recount how Gerent ANZ helped Care Australia bring its microfinance portal to life and provide communities with unprecedented access to entrepreneurial opportunities.
Key Highlights
02:21: Introducing Care Australia’s mission: helping to provide capital and financial support to members of underprivileged communities
03:30: What is microfinance, and how can it help individuals without access to capital achieve their business goals?
04:36: Exploring the ripple effect of microfinance; what really happens when one woman is enabled to achieve her long-term business goals?
06:30: How Care Australia’s microfinance portal works, and how individuals and financial institutions can contribute
08:39: Understanding the project: what did Care Australia need to bring their microfinance portal to fruition?
10:00: Unpacking Gerent ANZ’s transformation planning process; how do you build a first-of-its-kind microfinance portal?
11:02: Addressing common nonprofit budgetary challenges through out-of-the-box Salesforce functionality
13:12: The challenges of building two separate digital experiences for different user audiences
15:24: How Gerent ANZ ensured that operating costs were minimal so that as much money as possible could go towards Care Australia’s mission
16:16: Maintaining compliance, security, and governance throughout the transaction process
18:17: Taking a “divide and conquer” approach towards implementation to ensure maximum efficiency from beginning to end
21:11: Putting it all together: the impact that Care Australia’s microfinance portal has on individuals and communities in need
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