Credit Scoring for Smallholder Farmers: What to Know

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Credit Scoring is an innovative process of running a derisking model to assess a user as fit for potential financing facility (mfarmpay Inc., 2018). Several innovations abound within farmer credit scoring systems in Africa.

In Kenya, Ghana, and Uganda, legacy credit scoring within smallholder farming financing systems involve a stepwise process of users’ incremental loan access with approvals based on previous repayment successes. Others use cropping fields and area data as basis for loan approvals. Other credit scoring approaches involve use of digital savings wallet as basis for credit risk review.

It is worthy to note that variety of data and models for risk assessment are in use globally, with its use in Africa still nascent.

mfarmPay goes beyond these basic data points to render a digital scoring infrastructure and scientifically validated and weighted models (unequal weighting of datapoints) for parametric financing. Data sources are constituted by field parcel records, climate metrics, remotely sensed satellite imagery, and farmer-provided data based on (informed consent).

By providing the rail for accurate digital credit scoring for partner financial institutions, rural African smallholder farmers can be served. This will invariably boost their smallholder farmer lending portfolios.

Happy to continue the conversation.

Email: hello@mfarmpay.com

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