9. Takeaways for
— Typical borrower lag is 2 weeks
— Different countries do not have consistent behavior
— More experimentation is required in each country
— Improved record keeping needed
— More data needed to validate Kenya results
10. About Me
• Alex Glenday
• Grew up in Nairobi, Kenya
• PhD in Physics – Harvard University
• Post-Doc – Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
• More details at: www.balancingtheload.net
Zidisha is an online micro-finance non-profit using crowd sourced financing similar to Kickstarter.
It needs to balance the rate that new borrowers sign up to match the supply of money coming in to finance loans.
Too many new borrowers and many loans requests will only be partially supported (like Kickstarter there is a time limit to attract lenders to your loan) as the money is spread thinly over the loan requests, helping fewer people than if it was concentrated in a reduced number of loans.
Too few borrowers will leave money on table that could have helped someone.
Zidisha would like to know the size of the effect that various parameters it has control over will have on the rate that new borrowers take out loans.