Global Outreach and Financial Performance Benchmark Report 2017-2018

This report presents comprehensive financial and operating data of 762 financial service providers (FSPs) that have reported to MIX Market during 2017. Year-over-year lending growth remained steady at a rate of 9.8 percent in the number of active borrowers and 14.3 percent in the gross loan portfolio. In absolute figures, the total number of active borrowers grew to 120 million and the gross loan portfolio stood at $112 billion at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2017.

While the global trend is positive, regional variations were observed due to a variety of factors resulting from a difficult regulatory, political and economic environment. For example, the impact of inflation rates in Nigeria and the interest rate cap and election cycle in Kenya drove a decline in the value of the gross loan portfolio for the Africa region. Similarly, the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region continued to grapple with the lingering effects of the economic crisis in 2015 while the Latin America and Caribbean region witnessed merger activity followed by a period of operational consolidation, all of which contributed to the slowed growth seen in these regions.

Overall, FSPs around the world expanded their outreach to borrowers. While the number of offices declined to 51,160 in FY 2017 from 55,170 in FY 2016, many institutions began or continued to adopt new methods for product and service delivery such as agents, ATMs and merchant points-of-sale, as evidenced by the new data on digital delivery channel reported to MIX in FY 2017 from over 180 FSPs.