Featured Member: Al Amal Microfinance Bank

Al-Amal Microfinance Bank (Al-Amal), Yemen

A pioneer in Islamic microfinance, Al-Amal Microfinance Bank (Al-Amal) was established in 2008 as the first microfinance bank in Yemen. Dedicated to providing poor micro-entrepreneurs with access to financial services, Al-Amal targets youth and women with microcredit, savings, and insurance, among other services.

To date, Al-Amal has developed two youth-friendly products, Youth Fund (credit) and Child Savers (savings). Through slight adaptations to its product offerings, including collateral requirements and minimum balances, Al-Amal has quickly grown its reach to thousands of Yemeni youth. By the end of 2010, Al-Amal had disbursed 6,317 loans to young entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 30 and had opened 8,833 savings accounts for children under the age of 18. Today, the number of savings accounts has grown to 15,000.

Al-Amal Youth Portfolio vs. Total Portfolio

Recognizing that youth are a unique market segment, Al-Amal has adapted its products to make them more accessible to youth clients. The bank also altered its marketing and delivery techniques and staff training requirements to ensure that youth needs are being met appropriately.

Non-Financial Services

In addition to offering products with slightly different terms than those offered to its adult clients, Al-Amal offers its youth clients a myriad of supplemental non-financial services. Through its partnership with Silatech, Al-Amal offers training courses on financial education, financial management, marketing and sales, and customer service management. Al-Amal staff are also available to provide youth clients with business consultations, from conducting visibility studies for their business to making simple suggestions regarding business location.

Marketing and Delivery

Because its target clientele, youth and women, traditionally have been excluded from the financial sector, Al-Amal has focused on finding new ways to communicate its message of financial inclusion to these groups. As a result, Al-Amal coined its slogan “The bank of the unbanked.” In order to effectively reach youth, Al-Amal targets its marketing campaigns at universities, where young people often spend time, and has partnered with vocational training institutions, television networks, radio stations, and lottery campaigns.

Staff Training

Serving young people effectively requires a special set of skills. As a key point to building a strategic relationship with the client, Al-Amal, with the support of Silatech, trains its loan officers to communicate effectively with their young clients and to treat them with dignity and respect. By building youth loan officers’ customer service, sales, and marketing skills, Al-Amal strives to acquire young customers’ long-term loyalty.

To learn more about Al-Amal's youth friendly services and techniques, as well as specific product offerings, read their latest case study, First Middle Eastern Microfinance Bank Puts Youth First or take a look at Al-Amal's program on the YFS-Link map.