Group Accounts

In Mifos, clients can be organized into groups. If Mifos is configured to support centers, then groups are associated with centers and inherit the meeting schedule and loan officer from the center.  If Mifos is configured not to support centers, then groups are the top of the client hierarchy and a meeting schedule and loan officer must be defined for the group.

A group may have no clients, one client, or many clients. Clients can be added to a group either at the time of client account creation or at a later time.

The role of the group varies depending on the MFI. For some, the group is the primary unit with which the MFI interacts. Groups maintain a single group savings account and receive a single group loan from the MFI. For other MFIs, the group is simply a collection of individual clients.  The benefits of the group include:

• By vouching for other members of the group, the group provides due diligence of creditworthiness.

• By co-signing the loan, the group provides insurance of payment by individuals.

• The group provides reinforcement, esprit de’ corps, encouragement.

When a group applies for a group loan, the loan application goes through the same approval cycle as an individual loan.

The MFI can assign members positions such as president and treasurer, to facilitate group management.

Group Fees

Group fees can be defined from the Admin tab. A user can remove one or more of these fees for a particular group account. If a fee is removed from one account, it does not affect other accounts. In addition, an LO can apply miscellaneous fees or penalties, either at the time of account creation or later. The LO specifies the amount, which is added in the next payment. These are one-time charges; a penalty cannot be charged for an overdue fee.

Attributes for group records

The following table of group attributes is divided as follows: attributes related to groups, available during group creation; attributes related to the MFI, available during group creation; and attributes and actions that can be viewed/edited only after group creation, from the 'group Details page.

Attributes marked as Mandatory for Partial state in the table below are the minimum required to create a record. Pending Approval is an optional state; if Mifos is configured to hide this state, the attributes marked as Mandatory for Pending in the table should be considered as Mandatory for the Active state.  Note:  We have not thoroughly tested Mifos with the "Pending Approval" state hidden.  We do not recommend hiding this state.

Notes on Attributes

• Recruited by. The Formed by attribute is an additional attribute required to address the fact that the LO who manages a group may not be the same as the one who formed the group. This field is mandatory in all states and the value cannot be modified once specified during group creation. It is displayed in the details and edit pages as read-only information. All Active loan officers in the branch where the group is being created are listed in a drop down list. The LO assigned to the group can be the same as the LO who formed the group. The default value is the loan officer assigned.

• Name of Center Assigned.  If a center hierarchy exists in the system, groups must be assigned to a center to be approved. Groups inherit the meeting schedule and LO from the center. If a center hierarchy does not exist, the user must define the meeting details for the group. A group's center can be changed, but before that can happen, all loan accounts of the group and the clients must be in a Closed or Cancelled state.

• Group Trained:  Training is an MFI-wide setting and the training flag indicates whether a group has been trained. When a group is marked as Trained, a Training Date must be specified. A group can be marked as Trained only once and only one Training Date is saved per group record. Once the Training Date is saved, it cannot be edited or re-entered.

• External ID Number: This field can be helpful if the MFI used a different system in the past to transfer data to Mifos. This ID can be used as a link between the old and new systems. Mifos does not hold any logic to handle this field.

• Group Charges: Fee Types and Miscellaneous Charges: Miscellaneous fees or penalties can be charged to groups on the Group Charges page. These are one-time charges and penalties are not charged for overdue fees.

Group record states

When a group record is created, it is processed through various states, as illustrated below. A user with appropriate permissions can manually changes a group record state in Mifos.  If a checklist has been defined by the MFI, this checklist will appear when changing the group state [see Checklist].  

The state flow diagram explains the various states or statuses that a group record goes through:

Open