Making it easier to lend to the same borrower

September 21, 2011

By: Cissy Deluca

We have an exciting new feature to announce today! Kiva's partner technology team has been working hard to improve the efficiency of posting loans for our Field Partners around the world, and they have developed a feature that will allow our partners to easily post new loans for borrowers who have been funded by Kiva lenders in the past.

Our Field Partners often work with borrowers over a series of loans as the borrowers build credit, take out bigger loans, and expand their businesses. This new feature will allow our Field Partners to post a borrower’s second, third, etc. loan on Kiva without having to re-enter all of the borrower’s information.

This feature makes it easier for you as lenders to lend to the same borrowers you have funded before because every time a borrower you loaned to in the past is re-listed, you will receive a journal email letting you know that borrower has taken out another loan. You can see a sample re-listed loan below:

You’ll be able to recognize these re-listed loans by several characteristics:

The loan description on successive or consecutive loans has a heading “Update on [borrower name]”
We share the previous loan details and a link to the borrower’s earlier loan profile
The loan picture may be the same as a picture posted on Kiva earlier (Kiva allows our Field Partners to re-use the same photo for individual borrowers that have been posted on Kiva's website once before in a 24 month period, and we allow them to re-use group photos for up to 24 months, provided that 80% of the current group's membership is represented.)

Some loans you see for re-listed borrowers will be for concurrent loans. Most borrowers take out loans consecutively, meaning that they receive a second loan after having repaid the first. However, sometimes our Field Partners give out concurrent loans, allowing borrowers to take out one primary loan and a secondary “add-on” loan along with it. These “add-on” loans are typically smaller than the borrower’s primary loan and serve a different purpose. We used to limit borrowers to only having one loan listed at a time on Kiva, but in an effort to better reflect the realities of microfinance in the field on our website, Field Partners can now post successive and concurrent loans on Kiva. Because of this, you will be able to track borrower progress over time and see the various ways borrowers are working with our Field Partners through funds from Kiva lenders.

If you have any questions about this new feature, please email Kiva Customer Service at contactus@kiva.org.