Additional sorting capability

[Guest]

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[cpbailey]

I would love to see a some new categories to search for:

1.  Duration of loan
2.  Quick fund category (urgently needed).  This would be for any partner that funds other than beginning of month.  Currently, this might include Prisma.  I would LOVE to see some partners shifted to midmonth, and then those would be quick fund options between the 1st and say 14th of the month.  While other loans would be categorized as quick fund the later half of the month.  This could sway people to fund some slow to fund partners' loans such as Azerbaijan. 

[AccountAbility]

I'll second the request for sorting by duration/length of loan.

I'm still a little puzzled by the quick funding sort, since virtually all loans fund in 4 days or less.  Are we trying to get the kiva lenders to get these funded in say one day, or are we asking the MFI for a guarantee that the loan disbursal will occur very soon after it is fully subscribed? 

There have been a few examples here as to why loans were disbursed slowly, including one MFI who literally went shopping with the borrower to buy the goods with the loan proceeds.  If we want differentiation as to timing of disbursement, then I think we also would need to know the why of the delay.  (Which would be good in any event).

[cpbailey]

What I meant by Quick Funding category of loans is time to disburse of the loan.  If a loan is posted say August 3rd, it generally doesn't disburse until September 1.  Some people find this discouraging.  If there were some partners which had a cutoff date of the 15th of the month, it would allow people to select the earlier loan.  By strategically selecting say some Azerbaijan partner to move to the 15th, it might sway people to loan a slower to fund partners' loans.  I would suggest gradually moving the established partner toward the 15th, and it would then still only have one time per month to send/receive payments with Kiva.

Prisma disburses funds almost as soon as the loan is fully funded.  These would be high priority.  A cutoff within 2 weeks would be higher than a 4 week cutoff loan.

I notice that at the beginning of the month there are sometimes one hundred loans, but toward the end of the month 40 is a large number.  Two cutoffs would smooth some of the peaks and valleys of volume.  Also a six month loan that funds on the third and disburses on the fifteenth is comparable to a six and a half month loan that must wait until the first of the following month. 

I know Kiva gets the interest, but I think lender customer satisfaction would increase if loans were disbursed closer to the time of commitment. 

[AccountAbility]

I have all our loans on a spreadsheet.  One column is the date we invested.  The next column is the date we were told the loan disbursed to the borrower. 

In looking down the list, there are only three loans that disbursed in the first few days of the month.  For these, two were only two days after we invested and the third was about two weeks.

Most of our loans disbursed in two weeks or less.  And that is from our investment date, not when it was fully subscribed (I don't have those dates but they were always after we invested.

So I am still a little confused about your suggestion.  Have we just been fortunate in the MFIs we lent through (although we have one which was 55 days to disbursement)?

[Henry]

AccountAbility- maybe you weren't aware of this and I think it holds true for All MFI's.  KIVA bankwires funds to each MFI once per month, i'm sure this is to reduce cost and keep things simple.  Thinking of that and adding the rest of the story, does that help?  (I'm happy with the Few MFI's that pre-finance a loan, one day, maybe all will)

[AccountAbility]

AccountAbility- maybe you weren't aware of this and I think it holds true for All MFI's.  KIVA bankwires funds to each MFI once per month, i'm sure this is to reduce cost and keep things simple.  Thinking of that and adding the rest of the story, does that help?  (I'm happy with the Few MFI's that pre-finance a loan, one day, maybe all will)

Yes, I have been following that thread all along.  But that deals with the movement of monies between Kiva and the MFIs, which sometimes affects the timing of the borrower getting his funds, sometimes not (if the MFI advances the funds). 

But I guess I am assuming when we get an email saying that the loan proceeds have been disbursed to borrow X, that this means the borrower really has the loan money.  If not, what do those emails mean?  Some like Prisma come on the same or next day, a number are in a day or two and the rest range down to several weeks to over a month (record for us being 55 days). Many of these latter are the ones who wait for month end funding.  But in our experience these are clearly in the minority.

[cpbailey]

Let's see...my loans to Samoa took over 30 days.  They probably got funds on the first and could disburse to the clients on the 6th, but I selected the loans on the 4th of the previous month.  One from Ecuador took 18 days.  This is from Kiva's records on when I selected the loans, but they may have been there for a couple days before I got in.  Didn't check all of them.

I would say you have been lucky in timing or choosing the partners if you tend to get loans disbursed within a few days.  Prisma is like instant, though.

[AccountAbility]

We only have one loan to Samoa, but we made the loan on the 10th and it was disbursed to the borrower on the 25th.  Maybe they had better cash flow a few months ago. 

Edit: The average time from our investment to disbursal was 11.64 days, (which included one of 55 days at one extreme and one same day and four next day at the other extreme).

We didn't keep the full funding dates but if we used that date the average would look at least as good.

[cpbailey]

Account, it could well be that Samoa had cash flow restrictions more recently.  There were LOTS of loans for Samoa that month.  For a sudden spurt in loans, they cannot take the payments made during the month and fund the much larger amount of loans.  A new partner with little reserves also would not be able to fund ahead of disbursement by Kiva.  So in a sense, Samoa is an example of how much success and influence Kiva has in an area.

[AccountAbility]

Okay, let's not let this dialog cloud up your suggestion. 

Are you suggesting that Kiva send the funds to the MFI quickly after these "quick" loans are fully subscribed (as opposed to waiting until the end of the month"?

Or are you wanting Kiva to differentiate "quick" loans as those the MFI is prepared to immediately disburse (assuming out of their own funds)?

And if the latter, how might we have the MFIs differentiate loans which they will disburse from their own funds but on their own timetable, such as the MFI who goes out with the borrowers and disburses by buying the goods with the borrower?  As far as we can tell, our long delayed loan disbursal had something to do with the borrower not being able to immediately buy (for some reason or other).

So hopefully this dialog will not sound like a discouragement of your suggestion but rather a clarification of what we can improve in this regard.