Improvements to borrower privacy

[Guest]

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[Ali]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you all know about some improvements we're making to borrower privacy options which will be going live over the next month, starting tomorrow.

Just to give you a little bit of background, we've been talking at length about how to provide better privacy options for borrowers so that, by agreeing to be posted on Kiva, their profiles won't be publicly available to anyone who searches their names. We want to respect their privacy and give more control to Field Partners to decide what they think is appropriate to display.

Starting tomorrow, all delinquent, defaulted, and refunded loans will become anonymous. If you loaned to a borrower who is delinquent or whose loan has defaulted, these loans will still be fully visible to you in your portfolio if you are logged into your account. However, if you loaned to a borrower whose loan was then refunded to you, details on refunded loans will be anonymous to everyone, even to lenders who originally funded the loans.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be working on making other improvements to borrower privacy.

Soon, borrowers profiles will no longer be able to be found on Kiva through a search engine, and descriptions of delinquent, defaulted, and refunded loans won’t appear on the lend tab if you search for them. Additionally, journal updates about borrowers who are delinquent or who have defaulted on their loans will only be visible to lenders who have funded their loans. Details on all loans are still available through Kiva’s API, and we will be working on applying the privacy settings on Kiva’s website to the information made available about borrowers through the API.

Our Field Partners will be able to decide whether a  borrower’s location on their borrower profile should be shown or hidden. In addition, when loans are fundraising, Field Partners will be able to decide whether they feel comfortable listing borrowers’ full names or just listing their first names on the Lend tab. Once a loan has been funded, only the borrower’s first name will show up to anyone who didn’t lend to that borrower. If the borrower’s full name was listed originally, lenders to that borrower should be able to see their full name when signed into their Kiva account.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of these changes!

Thanks,
Ali

[waywardcats]

   That is all great news! 

  to everyone at Kiva for implementing these changes!

[Amy-in-PHX]

Soon, borrowers profiles will no longer be able to be found on Kiva through a search engine . . .

Great!

Our Field Partners will be able to decide whether a  borrower’s location on their borrower profile should be shown or hidden. In addition, when loans are fundraising, Field Partners will be able to decide whether they feel comfortable listing borrowers’ full names or just listing their first names on the Lend tab. Once a loan has been funded, only the borrower’s first name will show up to anyone who didn’t lend to that borrower. If the borrower’s full name was listed originally, lenders to that borrower should be able to see their full name when signed into their Kiva account.

Ali, I have a comment about the borrower's location.  I think leaving that off the loan information is unnecessary, especially when the borrower's surname is omitted.  And I think leaving off the location is a mistake, because that will deter lending in many instances. 

For example, I have made several loans in Kyrgyzstan.  But I always look up the borrower's town on a map first, and I do not lend near the city of Osh, because there were violent riots there just last year, in which people lost lives and businesses.  In Mexico, I usually avoid the States of Chiapas and Tamaulipas.  Tamaulipas is affected by the drug cartel violence to such an extent that the news media here refer to it as a "failed state" at times.  Chiapas has a number of municipalities that are not under the government of Mexico, but are controlled by indigenous rebels.  Avoiding towns or regions for reasons like these is a method of risk management, which should not be destroyed, IMHO.

Knowing the borrower's city name also helps with risk management, because it makes it possible for me to make sure my several loans in a particular country are not all to borrowers in the same town or city.  So when landslides took place in Bolivia a couple of months ago, for example, I knew that not all of my loans in Bolivia were at risk because I have not made all my Bolivia loans to people in El Alto.  If the borrower's location information becomes unavailable, no lender will be able to diversify a portfolio by lending to borrowers in several cities within a given country.

Since you have announced this change as something Kiva has already decided to do, I assume nothing we say here will be effective.  But I do suggest that Kiva clearly explain to the MFIs the likelihood that lenders will not find their country name, alone, to be a sufficient level of information on which to base a decision to lend.

Further, I am saddened that the personal connection between me and the borrowers is about to be badly eroded if, indeed, many of the MFIs omit the borrower's location from the information posted on the site.  There are many sources of info available on the Internet, which provide ways to learn more about the places in which the borrowers live - and knowing the name of the state/province/nearby town or city, makes it possible to learn a good deal about the culture in which the borrowers live.  Having only a country name to go on, will make most of this learning impossible.   

[David2051]

For those MFI's with working email addresses, it might be helpful to send a message to them giving reasons why location is important and why loans may not be made if location is omitted, and copying the message(s) to contactus as well.  For those with no listed, functional email address maybe contactus can forward the message?

[Amy-in-PHX]

For those MFI's with working email addresses, it might be helpful to send a message to them giving reasons why location is important and why loans may not be made if location is omitted, and copying the message(s) to contactus as well.  For those with no listed, functional email address maybe contactus can forward the message?

Somehow I doubt that hearing from an individual Kiva lender (of whom they had never heard before) would have the impact of hearing from Kiva, itself. 

I wanted to add to what I wrote before, that the "risk management" aspect of my concern would be a lot less important, if Kiva had not forbidden the MFIs from offering default protection on loans, thus throwing a greater burden of risk on lenders.  As I have said before, history shows clearly that many MFIs would cover defaulted loans if Kiva would permit it.  If it came in the form of a re-payment of the defaulted portion of a loan, six months after the end of the original "loan term" as posted on Kiva, and did not degenerate into MFIs simply substituting their funds for keeping track of borrower re-payments, then lenders would have less need to do their own risk management (which we have poor tools for, in any event) and the peer-to-peer connection would not be compromised by the default insurance.


The lack of city information about the borrower would still erode the personal connection to the borrowers in the way I wrote before, though.  Especially in large and diverse countries such as Mexico.  If someone from Europe knows that I live in the United States, they might picture something very different than if they are told that I live in Arizona, or if they are told that I live in Indiana, Alaska, or North Carolina.  It is the same in a big country like Mexico.  Veracruz is a very different place than Sonora, even though both are states in Mexico.  Similarly, Cusco is a different environment than Lima.  You get the idea.  I don't see how it adds anything of value to borrower privacy, to tell me that borrower "Maria" lives in  "Mexico," but not tell me that Maria lives in Veracruz -- or even which town in Veracruz she lives in. 

It is simply the nature of being a borrower, that you have to share some personal info with the person you ask to lend you the money.  Since I use credit, there are plenty of strangers who have info about me I would not have shared with them if I did not want to borrow money.  Giving up a bit of privacy is just part of the deal, and it's not unfair.

[iampaul]

Ali, I have a comment about the borrower's location.  I think leaving that off the loan information is unnecessary, especially when the borrower's surname is omitted.  And I think leaving off the location is a mistake, because that will deter lending in many instances. 

 

Amy, I agree 100% with everything you stated in your post.

Paul

[howard]

Surely there are a lot of Marias in Vera Cruz state. Given the absence of the surname, do we really need to go further to protect privacy? I agree that a general location is very desirable.

Howard

[YowieFreak]

Starting tomorrow, all delinquent, defaulted, and refunded loans will become anonymous. If you loaned to a borrower who is delinquent or whose loan has defaulted, these loans will still be fully visible to you in your portfolio if you are logged into your account. However, if you loaned to a borrower whose loan was then refunded to you, details on refunded loans will be anonymous to everyone, even to lenders who originally funded the loans.

• Why are expired loans going to be treated differently to refunded loans?
• Why are repaid loans going to be treated differently to refunded loans?  (Especially in the cases where the loan was simply refunded because of an error in the original repayment schedule, even though the borrower has made all their repayments so far in accordance with that "incorrect" schedule, and only has one repayment left to make.)
• Are the Ts&Cs of Kiva going to be changed to state that lenders must remove borrower's names from their own records (which may, in some cases, be searchable via the internet) when a loan is delinquent or defaulted?  Or will lenders only be required to remove details of refunded loans from their own records?
• Will the various internet "time machines" be modified to ensure that they do not display the earlier pages showing the borrower's actual name?

[waywardcats]

It is simply the nature of being a borrower, that you have to share some personal info with the person you ask to lend you the money.  Since I use credit, there are plenty of strangers who have info about me I would not have shared with them if I did not want to borrow money.  Giving up a bit of privacy is just part of the deal, and it's not unfair.

Amy, I think the difference here is that the people to whom you gave your information did not post that information on the internet for all others to see.  There may be some privacy that needs to be sacrificed, but in my opinion we need to do our due diligence regarding the Field partners and if they choose to protect a borrowers privacy, make our decision based on our trust of their judgement in these matters.  I think it is important to remember this:

Our Field Partners will be able to decide whether a  borrower’s location on their borrower profile should be shown or hidden. In addition, when loans are fundraising, Field Partners will be able to decide whether they feel comfortable listing borrowers’ full names or just listing their first names on the Lend tab. Once a loan has been funded, only the borrower’s first name will show up to anyone who didn’t lend to that borrower. If the borrower’s full name was listed originally, lenders to that borrower should be able to see their full name when signed into their Kiva account.

Kiva is not making it in any way mandatory that this information be hidden, it is up to the discretion of the Field Partner and the borrower.  That gives borrowers a lot more choices and a much better option to exercise their right to privacy than they had before.  I personally think that is an extremely good thing.

-Kerry-

[Amy-in-PHX]

Kerry wrote: 

Kiva is not making it in any way mandatory that this information be hidden, it is up to the discretion of the Field Partner and the borrower.  That gives borrowers a lot more choices and a much better option to exercise their right to privacy than they had before.  I personally think that is an extremely good thing.

Quoting myself, below -- I think I was fairly clear in expressing my understanding that omitting location information will be a choice, not mandatory:

I think leaving that off the loan information is unnecessary, especially when the borrower's surname is omitted.  And I think leaving off the location is a mistake, because that will deter lending in many instances. . . .

I do suggest that Kiva clearly explain to the MFIs the likelihood that lenders will not find their country name, alone, to be a sufficient level of information on which to base a decision to lend.

I simply disagree with Kerry that more MFIs choosing to omit location information would be a good thing.  Because it will come at the expense of the person-to-person connection that is at the heart of Kiva's mission statement, and because it will come at the expense of a lowered ability to manage risk, which will lead to greater losses of funds to lenders.  And ultimately, losses to Kiva lenders will deter future lending by most of those who experience losses, as well as all of those people's social contacts.  Therefore, I have urged Kiva to explain to the MFIs, the probability that omitting location information will deter lending to the clients of MFIs that make that choice.  I don't believe MFI personnel are, in general, equipped to take that into account when they make their decision, if it is presented to them in the way it was to us -- as "improvement to borrower privacy" -- without any mention of the costs to the borrower/lender relationship or the financial cost to lenders.

The people who lend me money do not put my info on the Internet, because I have better ways of communicating with them, which obviate the need to publish my credit applications on the Internet.  Kiva's entire raison d'etre is that the clients of MFIs in developing countries do not have any other way of communicating their credit needs to the people who have the money they want to borrow [i.e., you and me].  If Kiva were not putting the info onto an Internet platform, the money would not be flowing at the rate of $1 million to $2 million-plus, per week.  Seems like a fair trade to me.  The risk to borrowers of revealing their first names and the names of the towns in which they live, even on the Internet, seems trivial to me.  (In fact, I have put my own first name, city of residence, and photo on Kiva's platform, because the risk of doing so seems trivial to me.)  If you disagree with me, please explain how I am overlooking or failing to perceive the magnitude of the risk the borrowers are running, if their first name and town of residence are on the Internet.  To suggest that I am wrong because I have claimed that omitting location information would be mandatory (which I did not say) is not fair.

When I want to borrow money, I also do not have to gather up a group of five of my neighbors and let them into my financial business.  It is probably not entirely comfortable for clients of MFIs which use the "group lending" methodology, to have to do that.  But it is simply the only way the transaction can happen -- and the fact that the transaction happens is a benefit to the borrowers, even when balanced against the cost to their privacy.  (I assume we all believe that, or we would not be here.)  The alternative is the pre-microlending state of affairs, where the poor could never get a capital infusion for their business activities.  When the MFI clients have developed their financial lives to the point where they can become clients of regular banks, they will be able to handle their credit applications more privately.  And that will be "an extremely good thing," indeed.