Offering credit to remote communities, a challenge for banks: Compartamos

Mexico City. Looking ahead to the next six-year term, one of the main challenges that banks maintain and that have not been able to reduce the gaps is to offer financing to the most isolated communities in the country or to the lowest social classes of the pyramid, which at the same time is a segment that demands a good amount of credit, said Patricio Diez de Bonilla, general director of Compartamos Banco.

“There is still a lag in financial inclusion, there are millions of people who do not have access to financial services, if there is such a high market we must have the business of bringing products to isolated communities,” he said at a conference.

He said that many of the credit providers in this segment, due to operational and financing issues, among others, have weakened and that “has opened the door for regulated players, like us, to have that enormous opportunity to bring our products closer to clients who They demand it.”

“In terms of credit, we grew 29 percent in one year, the market demands the products and they are attractive and functional to set up a microbusiness, Compartamos credits are used to undertake and generate income, not only pay the financing, but have higher income,” he noted.

Diez de Bonilla indicated that “the market is still very large, there is a fragile competitive environment and that is where, given the conditions, we will continue to grow at rates of 20 percent in the portfolio, which speaks to the fact that we will continue consolidating the segment.”

The statements are given when presenting the results report corresponding to the first quarter of Compartamos, an institution that obtained profits of 1,148 million pesos from January to March, an increase of 14.8 percent compared to what was obtained in the same period of 2023.

The balance of the credit portfolio reached three million 48 thousand 81 million pesos, an increase of 16 percent when compared to the two million 627 thousand 995 pesos reported in the first quarter of last year.

In this sense, the delinquency rate with respect to the total portfolio was 3.28 percent, which meant a decrease of 0.20 percentage points compared to the 3.48 percent reported from January to March 2023.