In November 2012 the International Finance Corporation (IFC) committed a new investment in one of AMSCO’s Nigeria based clients, LAPO Microfinance Bank. This is the IFC’s first ever financing of a national microfinance institution in Nigeria.
Godwin Ehigiamusoe, the Executive Director of LAPO says: “Through this partnership, IFC is helping LAPO expand our capacity to reach a wider group of clients. Our relationship will help build greater financial inclusion among the rural low-income client base in Nigeria”.
AMSCO began its relationship with LAPO when it recruited and seconded a CFO – Kamakhya Singh to the company in May 2010. LAPO, a pro-poor microfinance institution provides services to poor female micro entrepreneurs, with a few male clients.
Female clients make up 98% of its client base. This tilt is due to the belief that women and children are more vulnerable than men and that when you empower a woman, you have empowered a family. In 2010, at the beginning of the AMSCO intervention, LAPO provided a range of financial services to over 247,000 clients. The company then had 235 branches in 23 states in Nigeria, with Benin City as the headquarters.
LAPO transformed from a microfinance institution into a nationwide licensed microfinance Bank in June 2010, and is now called LAPO Microfinance Bank Ltd. As at November 2012, after 32 months of AMSCO intervention, LAPO now serves over 750,000 clients in 26 states in Nigeria.
LAPO has enjoyed robust growth now serving more than 500,000 microenterprise borrowers, 90 percent of whom are women. This growth has enabled LAPO to lower interest rates by almost 20%, and it has also become the first microfinance provider in Sub-Saharan Africa to use a nationally representative poverty scorecard to select its clients and track their poverty levels.
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