BELGRADE (Serbia), January 12 (SeeNews) – The Development Facility of the European Fund for Southeastern Europe (EFSE DF) said on Thursday it is providing support to Opportunity Bank Serbia (OBS) in the development of a smartphone application to help the lender serve small farms in remote areas.
The application conducts a preliminary analysis and immediately provides potential clients with eligibility results that include available loan sizes and tenors, EFSE DF said in a press release. In addition, with a hand-held system for collecting and approving loans, the lender’s advisers can spend more time in the field increasing financial inclusion for farmers.
Approached for comment by SeeNews, EFSE DF declined to provide financial specifics about the partnership.
"We are pleased to support Opportunity Bank’s innovative approach for offering loan services to farmers. This solution will contribute to the EFSE goal of increasing financial inclusion in rural areas, areas that often still have little or no access to credit," EFSE DF Committee Chairman Markus Aschendorf is quoted as saying in the press release.
“Financial support provided by the EFSE DF for the purposes of developing this mobile app enabled us to simplify our loan approval process for this group of clients, whose priority is to receive preliminary information about loan availability and conditions on the spot and without the need to visit the bank. This gives Opportunity bank the chance to further increase financial inclusion of clients from this segment,” Vladimir Vukotic, President of Opportunity Bank’s Executive Board, said in the statement.
OBS is a community bank specialised in microfinance, providing micro, rural, agro and SME loans and other financial services to their clients in Serbia that cannot ordinarily access financial services from traditional banks. The bank has been active in Serbia since 2002, when it was first established as Opportunity Savings Bank.
EFSE DF, created in 2006, operates independently from the fund in a fiduciary arrangement under Luxembourg law, deploying technical assistance to maximise the impact and extent of the EFSE’s development finance mandate in target countries.