Paper to Paper; The importance of timely funding
One of the many problems facing the clients of developmental financial institutions is the turnaround time it takes between a client applying for a loan and the moment they can actually receive the funds. Often times operations staff become backlogged with the amount of loan applications they have to deal with and the time process applications. The time it takes a typical operation to review the loans, underwrite the funds to be distributed, and actually distribute the loan can take weeks to months. Review of applications is central to the success of lenders regardless of their community. When operations staff struggle to properly evaluate applications in a timely manner both the institution and it’s borrowers suffer alike. This causes borrowers to spiral further and further into debt while they continue to wait for funds.
We recently spoke to Asaak borrowers Gamut and Osude Benard who have owned a Print Shop for the last eight years in a suburb of Kampala Uganda to talk about there experience using Asaaks loan distribution and mobile repayment software.
Anyone who has visited a FedEx Kinko’s knows the specialized services it can offer business owners small and large alike. Gamut and Benard fill this gap in Kampala, Uganda. They service clients of all sizes whose printing needs range from marketing pamphlets to printing drug instruction guide labels for medicine. One of their clients is one of the eight degree-awarding universities in the country. Given the importance of their work in the community, they often have a myriad of hefty orders to fill on a deadline.
Prior to turning to Asaak, Gamut and Benard were plagued by a bottleneck created by the receipt of outstanding orders and exacerbated by late invoice payments and insufficient funding. This made tackling new projects an obstacle and extremely limiting to their growth. They created immense potential through their ability to forge relationships with such high-level clients but needed a solution, in the form of access to capital, to fulfill their growth.
Asaak’s ability to quickly review, underwrite, and fund businesses is synonymous with outstanding care and has been elemental to Gamut and Benard. They’ve already completed two loan cycles with Asaak using the application to receive funds, repay the loan, and coordinate with our staff. Now on their third loan cycle, Gamut and Benard have been able to fund their purchase of a new printing machine that has significantly improved their service timelines. Their new equipment enables them to accommodate 10x as many reams of paper a day. This allows the power duo to successfully maximizing their business potential by meeting their purchase orders on time.
“I do not know what we would have done without Asaak because they are swift in handling their customers. We also have registered high profits because of Asaak’s quick financing”, Benard said after their purchase. In a short interview with the managing director, Osude Benard, he said, “Asaak exhibits great customer care that is incomparable to other financial institutions”. Benard found that other financial institutions are infiltrated with bureaucracy and are hopeful that the relationship between Gamut and Asaak grows even stronger.
Their growth is ammunition for Asaak’s growth.
