Certification
Over the years, CreditAccess Grameen has received numerous awards and recognition for setting a paradigm of a customer-centric business model and efficient operations in the microfinance industry. We feel honoured to be recognized many times for our development initiatives as well.
- Great Place to Work
- Client Protection Certification
- Seal of Transparency
- Truelift Achiever Certification
- PPI Certification
CreditAccess Grameen Limited (Formerly known as Grameen Koota Financial Services pvt. Ltd) has been honored by Smart Campaign as having met all the client protection principles. Smart Campaign is the globally recognized, independent, third party evaluation that publicly recognizes financial institutions that meet adequate standards of care in how they treat their clients. The Campaign enables financial institutions to demonstrate adherence to the microfinance industry’s client protection principles.
CreditAccess Grameen is one of the 6 financial institutions in world and one of the 3 MFI’s in India to have been bestowed with this honor. The Smart Campaign set of principles based on which the microfinance institutions are gauged include appropriate product design and delivery, prevention of over-indebtedness, transparency, responsible pricing, fair and respectful treatment of clients, privacy of client data and mechanisms for complaint resolution.
The campaign aims to creating a more stable microfinance industry by way of encouraging practices that aim to ensure prudent, transparent and respectful treatment of clients. The Client Protection Certification Program contains a rigorous set of standards against which institutions are evaluated by certifiers licensed by the Smart Campaign. The certifiers—Planet Rating, M-CRIL, MicroFinanza Rating and MicroRate – are established, specialized microfinance rating agencies with deep experience analysing hundreds of institutions.
The Client Protection Certification awarded by Smart Campaign in 2013 came up for customary review after two years and M-Cril in its check-in found CreditAccess Grameen compliant with the principles and upheld the sameCertification. It said Grameen Koota “continues to fully adhere to the Smart Campaign Client Protection Principles (CPP)” and renewed the validity of Client Protection Certification by two more years in 2015.
CreditAccess Grameen Limited (Formerly known as Grameen Koota Financial Services pvt. Ltd) was awarded the official Seal of Transparency from MFTransparency as part of its Transparent Pricing Initiative in India. As per MFtransparency, CreditAccess Grameen’a firm commitment to consumer protection and responsible microfinance was primarily the basis of awarding the seal to the organization.
MicroFinance Transparency is an international non-governmental organization founded in 2008 with the purpose of facilitating transparent markets through the dissemination of true cost information to all market stakeholders. MFTransparency represents an industry movement toward fair practices and responsibility. MFTransparency launched the Transparent Pricing Initiative in India in April 2010 with widespread support from a range of industry actors as sponsors of the Initiative. The Indian microfinance market as a whole has shown a strong commitment to developing an enabling environment for transparent pricing. MFTransparency awards transparency certification to all MFIs who submit data and commit to educating their clients on pricing.
After undergoing Truelift Assessment at the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s Partnerships against Poverty Summit, Grameen Koota, was awarded with its Truelift Certification acknowledging it at ‘Achiever’s level’, out of the four Truelift milestones, for its commitment to pro-poor microfinance practices.
Truelift through this certification not only recognized the efforts made by Grameen Koota to put welfare of clients at the centre of microfinance but also demonstrated that the institution is responsible, effective and committed towards bringing about total financial inclusion to promote inclusive growth and poverty alleviation. M-CRIL conducted the True lift Assessment using the tool developed by TrueLift to form an opinion of an MFI’s performance.
PPI Certification from Grameen Foundation, USA
Grameen Foundation USA awarded Grameen Koota with the Certificate of Completion for its Basic, Advanced and Tracking Over Time Standards of the use of Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI). Grameen Foundation defines the PPI as “a simple and accurate tool that measures poverty levels of groups and individuals. Using the PPI, MFIs can better determine their clients’ needs, which programs are most effective, how quickly clients leave poverty, and what helps them to move out of poverty faster.” Grameen Koota adopted the tool in 2008 and has meticulously collected the PPI data from its clients. Thus the organization has been able to assess the progress of its clients from the poverty level they were in when they became its members. The efforts of Grameen Koota in using the PPI have now been recognized.