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.

[cpbailey]

Account,

Kiva should only send one payment per month for each partner.  What I am suggesting is to have each partner assigned a cutoff date of either the 1st of the month or the 15th.  If they moved one large or several smaller partners to the 15th to start with, they could fiddle with how to ensure that loans get filled by each due date.  Loans with the next cutoff date from the current date would have a designation to let people know that the INTENDED loan disbursal would be sooner.  Sometimes stuff happens--property gets rented before the funds are ready for the applicant to rent the intended property, the landlord won't rent to gypsies, and so on.  The partners who became 15th disbursal could either:

1.  Have their loans all skewed toward the beginning of the month that they move to the 15th.
2.  Move gradually toward the 15th.
3.  Place new partners on the 15th.
4.  When a partner had a net balance owed to it and loans for the month were funded, then do a statement and move the date.

IF a partner had a record of loaning from its own funds, it could designate a loan rapid funding.  This could either be all loans or there could be a date which would give a funding date.  This is a feasibility thing with programming.  This would be a second option.

From what I have seen, there are lots of loans toward the beginning of the month.  There are bursts from different partners, too.  Toward the end of the month, lots of Azerbaijan and Tajikistan with Samoa and maybe Mexico thrown in.  If there were different dates, it might smooth some of the loan bursts out and allow variety over the whole month.

So there could be two aspects--moving to two cutoff dates and/or rapid funding designations by partners which can temporarily fund from reserves.

Colette

[jcn50]

Just getting back to the "1. Duration of the loan", it will be good if the Loan Term:
- is displayed on the LEND page ;
- is added to the "Sort By" menu.


Thanks.

[Kay]

I believe the loan term is purposely "hidden," to avoid having the shorter-term loans "snapped up" even faster than they sometimes are now. 

[jcn50]

I believe the loan term is purposely "hidden," to avoid having the shorter-term loans "snapped up" even faster than they sometimes are now. 

What's bad with that?... (shorter-term loans being snapped up fast)

[Kay]

Only that the longer-term loans may tend to linger even longer than they sometimes do now!

[AccountAbility]

I for one am in favor of a free market.  Attempting to manipulate the lenders by "hiding" a fact isn't good.  When a lender finds out there were other choices that he missed because the facts were "hidden", he has a right to be upset.

Also, I would be interested in any statistic that shows larger loans are chosen less often than smaller loans.  (Of course, at $25 a pop, a larger loan is going to take longer to fund, even if it were chosen more often.)

My observation is that other than the "tiny" loans, there isn't a significant difference in the number of lenders choosing larger loans versus smaller loans--it just seems that way because it takes more $25. hits to be fully subscribed.

[Kay]

You're entitled to your opinion, AccountAbility, but you missed my point, because I was talking about loan term, not loan amount.

[AccountAbility]

You're right, I did miss your point!    Sorry about that.  

I would still rather let the marketplace decide, so I am in favor of more information available in the form of "sorts".  If this makes longer term loans less likely to be funded, then we need to address that as a separate issue.

[cpbailey]

Account,

I agree about loan terms.  I go thru looking to keep my average loan time to less than a year.  Lately, there are more and more long term loans--lots at 22 months.  It saves time for those of us looking for short periods.  The result seems to be to keep going to the partners which favor short term loans and ignore those that generally have longer term loans.  I could be overlooking a loan that helps meet my arbitrary goal.

Colette

[Kay]

I think everyone--or almost everyone--is looking for the short-term loans.  That's the problem! 

[AccountAbility]

We may be the minority, but the length of  the loan is a criterion only to space out the portfolio maturities.  Our goal is to have some coming due each month on a rotating basis.  As we add to the portfolio, some will be longer and some will be shorter based on the existing maturities.

I think the appeal in short term loans is in "activity".  If I loan for 3 months, I know I have a disbursement connection and repayment connection in that period.  If I roll this over into 3 more similar loans, I have 8 connections.  If, on the other hand, I invest in a 12 month loan, I get 2 connections -- disbursement and repayment.  Without journals or some other active connections, the feeling of connection to the borrower falls off. 

That is why I am concerned about making journals do-able for the MFIs, whether with broadcast general journals applying to many loans from the MFI or with checkbox format journals for each loan from time to time.   I think it is the connections that most lenders seek.
Dan