Project Details

During an eighteen-month period, Ashoka and AHI collaborated to create a Home Improvement Finance Entity (HIFE) in Colombia, to expand the availability of home improvement credit to low income, informally employed and informally housed families. The company was designed to offer housing microfinance and Home Asset Loan Finance (HALF) lending, via an innovative hybrid value chain combining citizen sector organizations (CSOs), a microfinance institution, a ceramic tile company, and a masonry company as both contractual partners and joint stockholders in the lending entity.  HIFE would thus use the networks and capacities of its partner organizations to deliver these financial products, leaving the existing customer interfaces in place, so that those entities can maintain identity and connection with their clients.  AHI built the financial projections and business plan and participated alongside Ashoka in the negotiations among the potential founding partners.