Esperanza Revolutionizes Microfinance with Mambu and AWS

Esperanza, a non-profit microfinance organization based in the Dominican Republic, was struggling to provide loans efficiently due to a legacy system that was costly and outdated. The on-premises solution required transcribing content from physical loan files, and managing loans and reporting on customer data was manual, complicated, and time-consuming. To advance the capabilities of its organization, Esperanza turned to AWS Partner Mambu. Working with Mambu and Amazon Web Services (AWS), Esperanza migrated to digital, cloud-based operations to significantly improve their loan processing speed and agility. Moving to Mambu’s cloud banking platform led to dramatic improvements in management efficiency, access to data and reporting, and the ability to expand the breadth of their services.

For the past 25 years, Esperanza’s mission has been to free families from poverty and share its religious message. Their comprehensive approach includes providing communities with access to capital, preventative healthcare, education, and financial services. A large part of their work is providing micro and small business loans to entrepreneurs and families outside of the formal financial sector. They see potential in their borrowers, and work with those who are under-served and unbanked, and ready to be equipped with tools to move them toward hope-filled futures.

Fulfilling its mission was difficult with a legacy loan management system that was only accessible on site and managed by a single person. The system didn’t allow mobile uploads, so loan applications were completed on paper in the field and entered manually back in the office. This made it slow and costly to review and approve applications.

Similarly, data needed to be downloaded by the system developer for reporting, so reports were often outdated and difficult to use. As the organization grew, it needed a way to track loans that were in default, and to track the non-financial services that they offered. The existing system couldn’t handle these activities, so Esperanza adopted separate solutions that didn’t connect with each other. This made it difficult to understand who the organization was serving and how to improve their offers.

Esperanza investigated several solution providers and AWS Partner Mambu appealed to them for a number of reasons. Throughout the evaluation process, Mambu was responsive, enthusiastic, and readily available to answer questions. Utilizing cloud capabilities from AWS, Mambu’s SaaS, cloud-native, API-driven banking platform provided the flexibility to select only the lending engine, rather than requiring a big-box solution that cost more and wouldn’t be fully utilized. With nearly 30,000 possible product configurations, Mambu’s selection allowed Esperanza to build the technological ecosystem including specific components with the right functionality and flexibility to meet Esperanza’s needs.

Leveraging Mambu’s expertise in finance operations and following a collaborative integration strategy, Esperanza migrated to the SaaS solution within six months, a process that can typically take years. The move included migrating data to a digital format that offered features to input and consolidate data more easily. The migration also facilitated data sharing between Mambu and Esperanza’s existing third-party systems.

Mambu’s feature-rich, flexible lending engine helped Esperanza configure new products for their customers using low-code or no-code APIs to develop and test features securely and efficiently, at scale. Mambu’s cloud-based engine, powered by a variety of AWS services, provided Esperanza with lending, payment, account, and transaction solutions in a versatile, agile way. A composable module approach running on Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) let Esperanza repurpose and reuse components for continuous innovation at a low cost. Mambu’s use of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to deploy containerized applications enabled Esperanza to create and distribute new loan products faster than ever before.

Real-time data pipelines and streaming applications built with Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK) facilitated the upload of Esperanza’s loan application data. To ensure data was handled efficiently and securely, Mambu’s solution included Amazon CloudWatch to monitor service performance and reliability, and Amazon GuardDuty to detect and prevent security issues.

By migrating content from loan files to the cloud and consolidating data across its services, Esperanza transformed its ability to access and gain insights from data. A customized, accessible interface and process automations improved operations across the board. Access to Mambu through connected solutions on mobile devices accelerated the creation of loan applications and assisted access to client information. The ability to automate loan documentation using open-source APIs reduced disbursal preparation time from two hours to two minutes. Increased access to data across loan applications and related documents enhanced financial tracking and transparency, and expanded features for the digital loan files, such as profile photos and signatures, reduced fraud. Better reporting provided increased visibility into time spent on loan processing activities, enabling Esperanza to identify areas to further improve processes and maximize efficiency.

In addition to optimizing their loan operations, Mambu’s solution helped Esperanza expand the breadth of their other services. New loan types were created through no-code business logic and rules. By adding data points to client profiles, Esperanza can now track recipients of healthcare and other non-financial services to evaluate service coverage and effectiveness. A survey integration lets Esperanza solicit customer feedback to better understand their customers and create new products to drive customer satisfaction. Rebecca Harver, MFI Digital Transformation Specialist for Esperanza, notes, “Because of Mambu, we can reach more people more efficiently with a higher quality of service and expanded product offerings.”

As one of the first financial institutions in the Dominican Republic to use cloud services, Esperanza has set a precedent for implementing sophisticated technology to help customers. Esperanza has grown with Mambu since implementation and continues to benefit from their collaboration. They work together to find new ways to digitize and automate processes and are working towards integrations for credit scoring. Mambu’s frequent releases of new features bring opportunities for Esperanza to expand products and services, and Mambu’s tech support facilitates Esperanza’s continued growth and innovation. “The relationship with Mambu and their customer support is outstanding,” concluded Harver. “Even though we're one of their smaller customers, they always treat us with care, listen to our needs, and help us overcome any challenges."