Promoting Client-focused Organization: Partner's Exit Monitoring System

Increased desertion is a widespread phenomenon in Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States. This paper describes work on the development of an exit-monitoring system undertaken jointly by Partner, a Bosnian MFI, and the Microfinance Centre for Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States (MFC), a leading membership-based regional resource center within the Ford Foundation sponsored ImpAct Programme.

As per the paper, the main challenges that MFIs experiencing high levels of client drop-out behavior face are:

• Difficulties in defining dropouts;
• Limited understanding of the phenomenon due to a lack of experience and in-house skills in client-related research;
• Lack of managerial tools in place to address the problem.

The paper explores:

• The rationale for an exit monitoring system;
• The system's design;
• The final system description and characteristics,
• Lessons learned from the pilot;
• Drivers and constraints to the system institutionalization.