The collaboration with ICCO-Terrafina Microfinance allowed CSP to tap into the unparalleled expertise from ICCO-Terrafina, which has clearly resulted in a increased thrust of Micro Finance Institutions (MFI’s) towards providing finance for the target cooperatives. Some of the significant outputs from this collaboration include the Cooperative Assessment and Management Matrix (CAM), which has become an essential tool for assessing the capacity of cooperatives and identifying the key capacity building needs to make them “finance ready”. Micro Finance Institutes (MFI’s) received training of credit risk assessment to provide loans in agriculture and to producer organizations. The agri-credit assessment tool, the agri-reference card and Cooperative Assessment Matrix were introduced to get better insights into lending to the agriculture sector. Support to MFI’s included; financial product development/refinement. initial market research, product design, training of staff, piloting new products and evaluation of pilots. Cooperatives were trained on the cooperative assessment matrix to assess their own bankability and allowing high-scoring organizations to access finance and receive loans. The combination of appropriate guidance and training to cooperatives by the SPARK team and the tailored risk assessment tools have resulted in improved repayment of loans by cooperatives. MFI’s are interested to continue and expand their loan portfolio for cooperatives. MFI’s received support to mainstream the new products in their systems and manuals. 29
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