Leasing is a financial service sector with a low profile. Typically it sits as a subsidiary in huge banks or non-bank financial services groups like GE or CIT. People in the sector tend to stay there for their whole career as their expertise builds and commands a good premium. It’s not a sector that the best and brightest aspire to work in, not because it can’t put their skills to good use at a good salary, but simply because they are unlikely to know about it. Get the picture? So its also not a sector that feels under the spotlight to deliver impactful CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility. But the time has come.
Microfinance is the most significant innovation in development for the last 25 years. Proving that credit in the hands of the poor is both useful and sustainable, it now provides loans to over 133 million borrowers who previously were unbanked, or paying moneylenders eye-watering interest rates. As it matures as a sector it faces a number of issues. Its needs other products than loans, and it would prefer if the money it lent helped to create income and not simply consumption. Microleasing is one of the possible solutions, and global leasing companies need to step up to the plate to help get it off the ground.
My research has already shown widespread agreement that there is enthusiasm to offer leasing in microfinance institutions and funders. Both parties however are nervous about introducing the product into a sector that has not seen it before. Expertise is needed, and that expertise is sitting in the global vendor leasing teams in Europe and the US.
This is a great opportunity for the sector to put its expertise to really good use. We need experts on secondment, we need technology, we need doors opened to vendors and we need the kind of support that large scale financial services can mobilise.
Rarely does something come along where the quiet diligence and expertise that passes un-noticed in one part of the world can have such a visible social and economic impact in another. Leasing – raise your hand and get in touch.
