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The purpose of this research is to explore the possibility of integrating women‐centred savings schemes into formal finance systems in order to help such schemes to leverage finance for housing purposes.

The research adopts a case study approach that uses mainly semi‐structured interviews. The case studies involve two savings schemes with their respective supporting organisations and five commercial banks in South Africa.

The case studies show that, if savings systems are flexible and suitable to their needs, women are capable of saving and repaying housing loans. The results also suggest that the accumulated group savings and the savings schemes themselves act as good collateral. However, despite showing interest in involvement in the low‐income sector, banks do not have a financially viable and workable business model to exploit this potential market.

Integrated community housing is essential. Future research is required to determine how good repayment rates could be achieved while maintaining risks at acceptable levels.

For practical purposes, collaboration with intermediary organisations working with women‐centred savings schemes would be a beneficial starting point in linking the savings schemes with formal finance systems.

The paper provides valuable reference material for understanding the gap that exists between what banks currently offer and what poor households require in meeting their housing needs. It may also be useful to researchers and practitioners as a basis for exploring innovative finance models for banks.

In the USA, a substantial literature has emerged to investigate the prepayment behaviour of mortgage borrowers, using loan level data to identify the effects of borrower characteristics. This paper supplements the existing literature in three ways. First, the study looks for the first time at the prepayment behaviour of German mortgage borrowers. Second, it uses a unique Bauspar‐Loan data set consisting of over 55,000 Bauspar‐Loans paid off or prepaid between January 1998 and September 2000. Third, based on the special characteristics of the Bauspar‐Loan, it is possible to identify a portfolio optimizing behaviour as the driving force for prepayment.

Studies of Depression-era financial remediation have generally focused on federal deposit insurance and the provision of equity to banks by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). This paper broadens the concept of financial remediation to include other programs – RFC lending, federal guarantees of farm and home mortgages, and the elimination of interest on demand deposits – and other intermediaries – savings and loans, mutual savings banks, and life insurance companies. The benefits of remediation or the amounts potentially at risk to the government in these programs are calculated annually and allocated to the various intermediaries. The slow remediation of real estate loans (two-thirds of these intermediaries' loans) needs further study with respect to the slow economic recovery. The paper compares Depression-era remediation with efforts during the 2008–2009 crisis. Today's remediation contrasts with the 1930s in its speed, magnitude relative to GDP or private sector nonfinancial debt, the share of remediation going to nonbanks, and emphasis on securities markets.

On 1 January 1981, banks and savings and loans in the United States started to compete nationwide for chequing account deposits. Prior to this date, in areas outside the New England region, banks and credit unions were the only institutions allowed to offer transaction accounts. A study carried out to compare the relative competitive advantages of banks and savings and loans institutions is reported.

The Imo State Supervised Agricultural Credit Loans Board (ISACLB) has outright default rates of more than 50 percent. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify the major characteristics of the Board's beneficiaries who completely failed to honour their repayment commitment as opposed to those who partially repaid.

Data on 36 potential causes of delinquency were collected through questionnaires distributed to 182 defaulters across ISACLB's three regional zones from 1987 to 1997; ISACLB's only completed loan cycle. Descriptive statistics were obtained using the odds ratio technique. Thereafter, a binary logistic regression estimated the marginal effect on the outright default probabilities of each factor.

ISACLB's large overdue problem was strongly linked to four key factors: age of borrowers, frequency of visits by loan officers‐cum‐extension agents, amount of savings deposits with informal clubs and total annual savings.

The primary drawback is the small size of the sample study, as well as the failure to correctly classify the partial defaulters in terms of the stage in the loan cycle at which they actually ceased to repay.

In general, initiatives to attract young entrepreneurs, as well as to incorporate a FINCA‐type savings scheme into the design of ISACLB's future lending programme should help to resolve its overdue dilemma.

Older traditional farmers are the principal defaulters. A targeted monitoring, training and information provision appears to be required.

There are very few econometric studies dealing specifically with the characteristics of outright and partial microcredit defaulters.

Papua New Guinea is a country with relatively low levels of social and economic development, particularly for women. Severe social problems, including unemployment, lawlessness and domestic violence combine with a particular set of geographic, historical, cultural and economic conditions to make life difficult for the country's rural poor, and especially for women. Self‐help through the provision of small‐scale credit for income‐generating activities is a relatively new concept in Papua New Guinea, although some forms of rural credit have existed since the 1960s. The need and demand for such credit are very high.

Examines critically the Grameen Bank (GB) experience in Bangladesh in order to understand the essential elements of its operations. Reports that this unique financial institution developed the important factors needed to help the poor and that GB has replaced physical collateral requirements with group responsibility. States that by organizing poor people into groups, it has created the social and financial conditions enabling them to receive loans; it has demonstrated that the poor are bankable, capable of making good business decisions in utilizing their loans and repaying them on time. Explains that GB showed the possibility to develop a viable and self‐reliant credit programme for the poor. Concludes that the GB approach also proves that financial intermediation is a viable device to fight poverty, and an excellent vehicle for community development.

This chapter presents case studies that explore the structures of indigenous savings group practices in Nigeria. Indigenous savings groups in Nigeria can be categorised as either unstructured, semi-structured or structured. These categorisation of savings groups can follow two patterns, which include Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and Accumulated Savings and Credit Associations (ASCAs). Through a qualitative case analysis of savings practices in Nigeria, we observed that the indigenous savings groups have similar goals and orientations, though their operating structures differ. The chapter highlighted the relative theme that cuts across these cases, and insightful recommendations are provided for upscaling and adopting indigenous savings groups in Nigeria and Africa. The chapter also discusses the role of government in facilitating savings and credit disbursement to groups. The implications for business actors and the government are highlighted.

Institutional structures of rural savings and loan associations influence their performances. One of the guiding principles for defining clear group membership boundaries is by setting rules on who has access. Social ties is a prominent requirement for membership. The objective of the current study is to provide quantitative evidence on the role of social ties membership criteria for the performance of saving and loan associations.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted in July–August 2019 comprising 48 associations in 13 villages in the Iringa District of Tanzania. In the current study, the authors use two indicators to measure the social ties between members, namely social closed association (the association applies criteria to accept only members who are relatives, friends or from the same hamlet) and physical distance (the fraction of members from other villages).

The authors find that associations are diverse both in terms of social ties, physical distance and performance, even in a small homogeneous region like Iringa District. Providing loans more easily to members with social ties has a negative relationship with loan repayment rates. Associations applying the social closeness criteria experience higher default rates than those not applying. The default rates become even worse when the fraction of member members from other villages increases in the socially tied associations.

Physically distant members are more likely to default as they perceive less social pressure in an association with socially tied members. Development practitioners and policy makers should integrate the potential implications.

The authors provide empirical evidence on the relevance of social ties on credit access and repayment in savings and loan associations, using a novel multi-level data on financial performance in the context of community-based finance organizations in rural areas.