Savings and credit
Ownership of members
When the assets of Bank societies are concerned those less privileged women bearing official membership become the legitimate owners of the assets belong to WDF. According to the operational principles appropriate financial services are available for women whether they are economically active or inactive, and this is a special feature which is not commonly found in many other micro financiers. Each member of Janashakthi Banking societies is a share holder and has voting rights to elect office bearers. The progressive scale of depth and breadth of outreach and the increased membership enables steady growth of the share capital.
Status of members’ savings
Products of savings introduced for women, enabled the majority of them to move about from informal to secured savings mechanisms. As per the annual statement of accounts, the progress of savings reflects steady progress. A diverse methods of savings have been introduced to suit different income patterns which are existed within dissimilar socio-economic contexts. Savings provide strong support for members to be benefitted on numerous ways, while also providing risk mitigating measures against loans.
Credit
Microcredit, as developed in the 1970s in South Asia, is a model based on group lending, in which the collateral is the group’s promise of repayment. As the industry matured, it became clear there was demand for an additional form of lending based on business income or other physical collateral. Rural women, face the greatest difficulties to access viable financial systems or Banks. Under these circumstances a large majority of low income earning families could not obtain loans from the formal lending institutions. Jansakthi Banking societies took initiatives to release loans particularly for those deserving for loans also based on social collateral guarantees.
At the inception Janasakthi released loans for agro-based activities, small scale of fishing , and to start small businesses and in subsequent stages, the lending facilities were widened to issue housing loans as well as loans for several other distinctive purposes.