Financial Intermediation

FI-01

Number of Loans Outstanding

DEFINITION: Number of outstanding loans in the eligible financial intermediary institution portfolio at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE: This indicator reflects the number of eligible loans an intermediary has outstanding at the time of reporting. Number of outstanding loans should include the number of all loans disbursed to clients that have not been fully repaid and have not been written off at the end of the reporting period. “Eligibility” means those loans that are or can be supported under the terms with the intermediary.

Note:

Different methodologies exist in what “supported” means. Some institutions pursue an allocation approach (supporting loans directly by passing on preferential terms, e.g. longer tenor) or a portfolio approach (supporting an entire eligible portfolio and measuring its growth over time). Both are possible but would need to be specified under the respective reporting arrangement.
“Outstanding” implies a stock variable at a certain point in time. This does not measure the number of loans supported over time. Especially for on lending that has shorter tenors (e.g. under a year, for example in microfinance) or longer tenors than the reporting period, the number of outstanding loans may not be the same as the number of loans supported. For this, refer to the metric “Average Tenor of Loans Outstanding” to compute the number of loans supported over time.
This metric is not intended to measure the number of clients served. An individual clients can have several loans outstanding, and especially when computing number of clients supported over time, they can have repeat loans. For measuring the number of clients served, please refer to “Number of active borrowers/clients”.
This is a parent indicator. It can be disaggregated and specified in various ways given the DFI/practitioner’s approach, project objective, or country context, for example by ownership/leadership (sex, age etc.), size of the companies (e.g. micro, small, medium), sectors, geography (e.g. rural/urban), age or growth of company (young firms, gazelles, etc.), innovation, etc.
This indicator only applies to intermediated financing though commercial banks, microfinance institution, a non-bank financial intermediary, or other financial institutions. Refer to metrics under “Private Equity and Investment Funds” for those types of intermediated financing.

Applicability: intermediated finance, not Fund investment.

Related indicators: This indicator should have the same scope as the value of loans outstanding, and number of active borrowers/clients would be a subset.

Unit: #

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FI-02

Value of Loans Outstanding

DEFINITION:

Value of outstanding loans in the eligible financial intermediary institution's portfolio at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

This indicator reflects the value of eligible loans an intermediary has outstanding at the time of reporting. The metric should include the value of all loans disbursed to clients that have not been fully repaid and have not been written off at the end of the reporting period. “Eligibility” means those loans that are or can be supported under the terms with the intermediary.

Note:

Different methodologies exist in what “supported” means. Some institutions pursue an allocation approach (supporting loans directly by passing on preferential terms, e.g. longer tenor) or a portfolio approach (supporting an entire eligible portfolio and measuring its growth over time). Both are possible but would need to be specified under the respective reporting arrangement.
“Outstanding” implies a stock variable at a certain point in time. This metric does not measure the value of loans issued over a period of time. Especially for on lending that has shorter tenors (e.g. under a year, for example in microfinance) or longer tenors than the reporting period, the value of outstanding loans may not be the same as the total value of loans supported. For this, refer to the “Average Tenor of Loans Outstanding” to compute the value of loans supported over time.
Unlike the number of loans, the value of loans also reflects the value lent to clients as several loans can be added up.
This is a parent indicator. It can be disaggregated and specified in various ways given the DFI/practitioner’s approach, project objective, or country context, for example by ownership/ leadership (sex, age etc.), size of the companies (e.g. micro, small, medium), sectors, geography (e.g. rural/urban), age or growth of company (young firms, gazelles, etc.), innovation, etc.
This indicator applies to intermediated financing though commercial banks, microfinance institution, a non-bank financial intermediary, or other financial institutions. Refer to metrics under “Private Equity and Investment Funds” for those types of intermediated financing.

Applicability: intermediated finance, not Fund investment.

Related indicators: This indicator should have the same scope as the number of loans outstanding.

Unit: currency

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FI-03

Number of Active Borrowers/Clients

DEFINITION:

Number of unique clients that form part of the number of loans in the eligible financial intermediary institution’s portfolio at the end of the reporting period. This indicator is intended to remove double counting from the number of loans/number of investments due to parallel or successive loans.

GUIDANCE:

This indicator captures the number of unique borrowers with an outstanding account as a sense of how many enterprises/people have benefitted from on-lending during the reporting period. It constitutes a subset of the number of loans outstanding by only counting loans once if several loans are made to the same client during the reporting period.

Note:

In line with the metric “Number of loans outstanding” this only corrects for multiple loans issued to the same client during the reporting period. This does not cover repeat loans that are issued in a new reporting period. To measure this, a different indicator or complementary variable such as the dropout rate may be used (% of clients with active loans not engaging in in repeat loans, especially in microfinance).
This is a parent indicator. It can be disaggregated and specified in various ways given the DFI/practitioner’s approach or country context, for example by ownership/leadership (sex, age etc.), size of the companies, sectors, geography (e.g. rural/urban), age or growth of company (young firms, gazelles, etc.), innovation, etc.
This indicator applies to intermediated financing though commercial banks, microfinance institution, a non-bank financial intermediary, or other financial institutions. Refer to metrics under “Private Equity and Investment Funds” for those types of intermediated financing.

Applicability: intermediated finance, where possible and relevant, not Fund investment.

Related indicators: This indicator should be a subset in terms of scope of the number and the value of loans outstanding.

Unit: #

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FI-04

Average Tenor of Loans Outstanding

DEFINITION:

Average (simple mean) initial tenor (in months) of all outstanding loans in the eligible portfolio at the time of measurement. This indicator provides specificity around length and nature of portfolio.

GUIDANCE:

The indicator measures the length of the average tenor of the underlying portfolio.

Note:

This is a parent indicator. It can be disaggregated and specified in various ways given the DFI/practitioner’s approach, project objective, or country context, for example by ownership/leadership (sex, age etc.), size of the companies (e.g. micro, small, medium), sectors, geography (e.g. rural/urban), age or growth of company (young firms, gazelles, etc.), innovation, etc.
For simplicity and to reduce the reporting burden this is computed as the simple average of the underlying eligible portfolio (i.e. sum of all tenors divided by the number of loans). Alternative metrics exist such as weighted average by subclass (size etc.) or weighted by loans value (i.e. average tenor per currency unit). This distinction may be especially relevant when considering various disaggregation of the indicator (e.g. if reported by size class the average of the average may differ if not weighted by the scope of the size class, and appear inconsistent in reporting).
This indicator applies to intermediated financing though commercial banks, microfinance institution, a non-bank financial intermediary, or other financial institutions. Refer to metrics under “Private Equity and Investment Funds” for those types of intermediated financing.

Applicability: intermediated finance, not Fund investment.

Related indicators: This indicator should apply to the same scope as the number and the value of loans outstanding.

Unit: # Months

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FI-05

Number of deposit transaction accounts

DEFINITION:

Number of deposit/savings transaction accounts in the financial intermediary institution portfolio at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

The indicator measures the number of deposit transaction accounts held by the intermediary. Accounts that can be used for making and receiving payments qualify as transaction accounts and are typically called current or checking accounts. The definition includes mobile money and e-money accounts that allow for cash-in and cash-out operations and other payments. This indicator can further be qualified to measure the number of transaction accounts held by the intermediary that are active. Accounts that have processed at least 1 transaction / 30 days qualify as active accounts. If this indicator can indeed be measured as specifically ‘active’ add in the indicators name “Number of active deposit transaction accounts”.

Note:

This indicator can be disaggregated and specified based on the given DFI/practitioner’s approach, for example active vs dormant accounts, underserved segments (i.e. gender), mobile account, etc.

Applicability: intermediated finance, where possible and relevant, not Fund investment.

Unit: #

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FI-06

Number of merchant acceptance points (POS)

DEFINITION:

Number of merchant acceptance points (point-of-sale payment solutions) at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

This indicator captures the number of point-of-sale solutions allowing merchant to accept electronic payments. These include physical point-of-sale terminals as well as mobile phone or internet-based mPOS solutions. For mPOS solutions and QR codes it may be appropriate to track active users (at least 1 transaction in 30 days) or focus on measuring the growth in the volume and number of transactions processed through these services. Applicability: intermediated finance, where possible and relevant, not Fund investment.

Unit: #

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FI-07

Access to digital payment services

DEFINITION:

Number of clients of the intermediary with access to digital payment services (e.g. card, internet payments, platform, app etc.) in intermediary financial institution at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

The indicator measures the number of clients of the intermediary who have access to digital payment services, including debit or credit card, and ability to make payments using the internet via an app, or platform. These payment services may be provided by an institution managing the clients’ deposit transaction account or a third party and are expected to enhance the ability of the individual client to benefit from an account and provide access to expanded and higher quality payment services.

Applicability: intermediated finance, where possible and relevant, not Fund investment.

Unit: #

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FI-08

Value of non-cash transactions

DEFINITION:

Value of payments processed measured by Gross Transaction Value during the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

The indicator measures the total value of transactions processed by the intermediary. This measure may include the overall transaction volume processed by the intermediary (e.g. including cash-in, cash-out transactions processed by an agent network) or be defined more specifically focused on non-cash transactions, digital merchant retail payments or cross-border payments. For ‘non-cash transactions’ the definition would typically include number of cheques, credit transfers, direct debits, payment card transactions, and payments by e-money instruments (card-based e-money instruments, mobile money products, and online money products). Digital merchant retail payments would refer to electronic transactions for the payment of goods and services. Cross-border payments would typically refer to international remittances and other cross-border payments.

Applicability: intermediated finance, where possible and relevant, not Fund investment.

Unit: # currency

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FI-09

Number of Active Female and Women-Owned/Led Enterprise Clients served through a Financial Institution

DEFINITION:

The number of active female clients and/or women-owned or women-led enterprise clients served by a commercial bank, microfinance institution, a non-bank financial intermediary, or other financial institution. A women-owned or women-led enterprise client is one that has significant female representation in ownership and/or in decision-making through leadership.

GUIDANCE:

Refer to guidance for “Number of Active Borrowers/Clients”

This metric aims to measure the gender diversity of a financial institution's retail and/or business lending portfolio and may be disaggregated by type of portfolio (e.g., SME, microfinance, trade finance, retail, housing). The metric requires the financial intermediary to understand and verify female representation in ownership and/or in decision-making through leadership (refer to the definition of leadership in the metric “Number of Women in Senior Management”), and systematically collect and report on sex disaggregated data. Practitioners may refer to gender ownership and/or leadership benchmarks as needed, such as those specified by the 2X Challenge (www.2xchallenge.org) or women-owned/led enterprise definitions as specified by the IFC: (https://www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/industry_ext_content/ifc_external_corporate_site/financial+institutions/priorities/ifcs+definitions+of+targeted+sectors). Practitioners may need to assist financial intermediaries' ability to collect, verify, and report on this sex-disaggregated data.

Applicability: Clients of a financial intermediary, but not used for investment fund investees. For investment fund investees, refer to “Number of Women in Senior Management”, “Number of Women on the Board”, and “Number of Female Founded Enterprises”.
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Applicability: intermediated finance, where possible and relevant, not Fund investment.

Unit: #

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FI-10

Number of Loans Outstanding to Female and Women-Owned/Led Enterprise Clients served through a financial institution

DEFINITION:

Number of outstanding loans in the eligible financial intermediary institution’s portfolio to female and women-owned/led enterprise clients at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

Refer to the guidance on “Number of Loans Outstanding” metric.

Applicability: Clients of a financial intermediary, but not used for investment fund investees. For investment fund investees, refer to “Number of Women in Senior Management”, “Number of Women on the Board”, and “Number of Female Founded Enterprises”.

Unit: #

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FI-11

Value of Loans Outstanding to Female and Women-Owned/Led Enterprise Clients served through a financial institution

DEFINITION:

Value of outstanding loans in the eligible financial intermediary institution’s portfolio to female and women-owned/led enterprise clients at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

Refer to guidance in “Value of Loans Outstanding” metric.

Unit: currency

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FI-12

Number of deposit transaction accounts to Female and Women Owned/Led Enterprise Clients served through a financial institution

DEFINITION:

Number of deposit/savings transaction accounts in the financial intermediary institution’s portfolio to female and women-owned/led enterprise clients at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

Refer to guidance in “Number of Deposit Transaction Accounts” metric.

Unit: #

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FI-13

Access to digital payment services to Female and Women-Owned/Led Enterprise Clients served through a financial institution

DEFINITION:

Number of female and women-owned/led enterprise clients of the financial intermediary with access to digital payment services (e.g. card, internet payments, platform, app etc.) in the intermediary financial institution’s portfolio at the end of the reporting period.

GUIDANCE:

Refer to guidance for the “Access to digital payment services” metric.

Unit: #

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