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By Nwakaego Alajemba
Naira Manager, a financial management web based application for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) is making its mark to help enterprises better manage their finances and be positioned to leverage support from financial institutions.
“Naira Manager is designed to boost financial inclusion and probity among millions of MSMEs operating in Nigeria and elsewhere across the globe,” said founder of Naira Manager, Mebele Ifechukwude.
In spite of the significant contributions of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to the economy, MSMEs are least considered for loans and other assistance by banks.
“The reason being that most MSMEs cash flow isn’t stable; it cannot be traced thereafter making it difficult for them to get grants or loans,” said Ifechukwude adding “this is the main reason why Naira Manager,exist. The web application features agent banking, business planning and management tools such as financial intelligence, business modeling, forecasting, real time financial analysis, business information, business networking and loan/grant application.
“Our goal is to increase financial inclusion, access to finance in poor and low density areas across Africa.”
According to Ifechukwude, the financial sector is undergoing changes globally, and these changes are driven by technological innovations, new customer behaviors and changes in regulations after the 2008 financial crisis.
In Africa, these changes have created an unprecedented opportunity to achieve access to finance, financial intelligence and increase financial inclusion. Models like agent banking, branchless distribution, mobile banking are reducing costs and risk also enabling reach to the previously unbanked population, including in poor and low-density areas on the continent.
The increase in mobile phone penetration which stands at 77% is a clear indication that Africa is a new frontier. But with the Banking penetration (number of banking accounts to population) being low at 17% on average compared with 50% in other emerging markets in 2014, access to credit, poor knowledge on accounting principles, financial inclusion remains a big problem in Africa and a major challenge for MSMEs in Africa.
According to Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) and National Bureau of Statistics, 73.24% of the topmost priority of assistance needed by MSMEs’ operators is finance. In addition, only 4.2% of 17.2 million MSMEs have been able to access loans or overdrafts from financial institutions while new entrants or start-ups find it practically impossible to access funds from banks.
These categories of enterprises have extremely volatile cash flow and poor record keeping all of which make them least attractive to funding or banking institutions.
Naira Manager is targeting this enterprise segment to kit them with the desired tools on financial management via a web based application.
