Empowering MSMEs and microenterprises: MSC’s success story with UOB and OBUL

• Dec 28, 2023
• 1 min

MSC helped the banks Opportunity Bank Uganda Limited (OBUL) and Urwego Opportunity Bank (UOB) develop a financing product targeted at MSMEs.

Opportunity Bank Uganda Limited (OBUL) and Urwego Opportunity Bank (UOB) in Africa struggled to understand the financing needs of microenterprises in Uganda and MSMEs in Rwanda. MSC helped the banks develop a financing product targeted at MSMEs. MSC conducted the market segmentation, designed the survey tool, and implemented it. MSC also formulated a credit-scoring model for the banks.

MSC’s recommendations helped reduce OBUL’s non-performing loans from 29% in 2013 to 3.7% in 2016. In December 2016, SME loans formed 26% of OBUL’s USD 4.95 million portfolio with 1,637 SME loan clients. UOB financed 550 enterprises with a portfolio of USD 1.66 million and maintained a high portfolio quality of less than 3% of non-performing loans at the end of the pilot.

This project reduced the turnaround time of individual loans to MSMEs from two months to eight days, and the average loan disbursed increased to USD 5,500.