SPTF Workshop on Social Performance Management

From February 19th to 22nd, The Social Performance Task Force (SPTF), CGAP, Dvara and Leapfrog Investments organized a learning workshop on the theme of Customer Centricity in Mamallapuram (Tamil Nadu), in conjunction with the SPTF annual meeting.

The event brought together 280 participants, who shared practical experiences and discussed case studies highlighting how customer value management can best achieve the dual goals of business success and financial inclusion. Current topics covered at the workshop included the opportunities and risks of new technologies and the digitalization of financial services, measuring and managing financial services results at the customer level, customer segmentation to define more tailored products, and the Mimosa India report on loan penetration.

The financial success of the inclusive finance sector is a necessary but insufficient condition for ensuring a positive impact on the lives of its clients through financial services. As the crises of recent years in Bosnia, Morocco, and Bolivia, as well as in some states of India, have shown, rapid growth and high profits are not necessarily indicators of improved living conditions for clients, or even of good long-term financial performance. This is why the inclusive finance sector, through the coordination work of SPTF, has defined a series of best practices accepted by the entire sector to describe and evaluate the provision of responsible financial services: these are the "Universal Standards" (USSPM – Universal Standards for Social Performance Management).

Since its creation in 2008, as part of its mission to support and open up a field of action for responsible inclusive finance, the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation has been active in the field of development cooperation; in doing so, it promotes and applies the combined systematic evaluation and analysis of social and financial performance with all its partners. The Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation has been an associate member of MFIN since 2017.

Since 2016, the Foundation has conducted an annual assessment of the social performance of a portfolio of representative companies to obtain a comparative measurement of performance compared to the market and to identify areas for improvement as part of the implementation of its annual action plan. Presented to the Foundation's Management and Board of Directors, this analysis allows for more precise monitoring of our actions in order to successfully carry out our mission. It is communicated externally to enable the exchange of knowledge and practices. (To consult the Foundation's benchmarks and other SPI4 benchmarks: //www.cerise-spi4.org/#/benchmarking/.)