MANAGEMENT WORKSHOP

On 5 August, the Reserve Bank of Fiji hosted a Social Performance Management workshop, facilitated by Good Return. Twenty-three participants from the reserve bank and a range of commercial banks, government agencies, microfinance institutions, NGOs, TELCOs and academic institutions actively participated in the workshop, which covered such topics as: introduction to SPM, poverty measurement, pricing transparency, client protection, and universal standards for SPM. One outcome of the workshop is a plan to develop a poverty assessment scorecard for Fiji.

Under its partnership with SPBD Fiji, Good Return has conducted a Client Protection Assessment to assess SPBD Fiji’s compliance with the SMART Campaign’s Client Protection Principles. The SMART Campaign is a global campaign committed to embedding client protection practices into the institutional culture and operations of the microfinance sector.The Smart Campaign embodies a set of core principles for the treatment of microfinance clients – the minimum standards that clients should expect to receive when doing business with a microfinance institution. The principles at the heart of Smart Microfinance are:

1. Appropriate product design and delivery

2. Prevention of over-indebtedness

3.Transparency

4. Responsible pricing

5. Fair and respectful treatment of clients

6. Privacy of client data

7. Mechanisms for complaint resolution

Good Return has a partnership MoU with the Smart Campaign and has two Certified Assessors on its program team. For information feel free to contact James Le Compte; james@goodreturn.org