Capital is only half of it
Money alone rarely changes a business. Money plus the skill to deploy it does. That is why guidance travels with every Washi loan.
Our programmes
Three kinds of support
Before the loan, during the loan, and after it — because the hardest questions rarely arrive on disbursement day.
Before
Pre-loan workshops
Every incoming client attends practical workshops covering budgeting, cash-flow management and business reinvestment. They are compulsory, and they are the reason our clients tend to know exactly what their money is for before it arrives.
During
Ongoing field coaching
Your loan officer is not only a collector. She is a coach who sees dozens of businesses like yours every week and can tell you what is working elsewhere in your market.
After
Business advisory support
Regular check-ins after disbursement to help you navigate price swings, seasonal slumps and supply problems — and to protect the expansion you have paid for.
What we cover
Our sessions are built for people who are already trading, and who will apply what they learn the same week.
Practical, not theoretical
Budgeting your household and your business separately
The single most common cause of a business that never grows is a till that also feeds the family without being counted.
Managing cash flow week by week
Understanding what comes in, what goes out, and what must be set aside before it is spent.
Reinvesting for growth
Which profits should go back into stock, which into equipment, and which into savings.
Borrowing responsibly
How to judge what you can genuinely repay, and how to recognise a loan that will hurt you — from anyone, including us.
Your rights as a client
What you are entitled to expect from Washi, and exactly how to complain if you do not receive it.
The Washi Credit Score
A repayment record should be worth something — including somewhere other than the place you built it.
We are developing a credit rating system that turns your history with Washi into a credit score you can carry. The intention is straightforward: a woman who has repaid reliably for years should be able to show that to another institution, and be treated accordingly.
It is a small idea with a large consequence. For clients who have never had a formal financial identity, a portable record is the difference between starting over with every lender and building something that compounds.
This system is in development and is not yet available to clients.
Reaching further
Rural and peri-urban outreach
Financial inclusion that only reaches the main road is not inclusion.
Washi deploys field credit officers directly into rural and peri-urban centres to reach informal micro-entrepreneurs and groups that formal institutions rarely visit. Our officers survey an area properly before we open in it — understanding the markets, the crops, the crafts and the trading patterns that actually sustain that community.
It is slower than lending from a city desk. It is also the only way to lend responsibly to people whose businesses you have never seen.
Learning is part of the loan
Ask your nearest branch when the next pre-loan workshop is running in your area.