MoneyMart founder and group chief executive officer Ethel Mupambwa
DIGITAL microfinancier, MoneyMart Finance, is positioning itself to become a fully-fledged fintech-driven microfinance bank within the next five years, leveraging strong demand for doorstep banking solutions from Zimbabwe’s informal sector, NewsDay Business can report.
MoneyMart was registered in 2013 and obtained its first operating licence the following year.
Since then, the microfinancier has grown to 43 branches across the country, with a staff complement of over 200.
MoneyMart founder and group chief executive officer Ethel Mupambwa said the company, which marked 11 years in operation this year, was preparing to transition to a deposit-taking entity from a credit-only microfinance institution.
She said this transition would help deepen the entity’s relationship with clients who are increasingly preferring to handle all financial services under the MoneyMart brand.
“In the next five years, MoneyMart is growing into more of a fintech bank. We have understood that the population of Zimbabwe might not really trust banks, but they still need banking services. And MoneyMart is providing banking services at their doorstep,” Mupambwa said.
She was speaking to NewsDay Business on the sidelines of the just-ended In Conversation with Trevor Ideas Festival last week.
The annual festival is convened by Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) chairman Trevor Ncube.
AMH publishes NewsDay, Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard. It also runs an online broadcasting channel, HStv.
Given the level of informality in Zimbabwe, Mupambwa said, informal establishments required flexible credit and insurance products.
Statistics show that 76,1% of the 204 798 operational establishments nationally are informal.
“When we are embedding even our credit solutions with micro-insurance, it means at the end of the day every household, even a formal employee, would want to get in touch with a MoneyMart Finance service or product,” Mupambwa said.
MoneyMart, she added, encourages clients to deposit funds through partner commercial banks, and that customer loyalty had forced the entity to offer its own savings products directly.
“At one time, our clients would just want to be able to relate with only the brand of MoneyMart Finance,” Mupambwa said.
“Hence the push to go the route of taking a microfinance bank licence so that they continue with the brand that they know.”
She said the institution was considering applying to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to test some of its fintech-based service models under the regulatory sandbox.
Although MoneyMart primarily focuses on the informal economy, Mupambwa noted that some businesses once considered small had grown significantly.
“When I’m telling you that there are some businesses that are now acquiring assets valued as much as US$30 000, I will not call that a small business,” she said.
“If a business is now employing about 20, I don’t categorise that as a small business anymore because it has grown.”
She said the company, therefore, serviced enterprises that had evolved from micro-level to medium-scale operations, despite not being listed or formally classified as a corporation.
“We grow with our businesses. As an institution, we can safely say we deal with up to medium-sized businesses,” Mupambwa said.