The ability of households to take on and manage debt is the focus in this edition of Business Day Spotlight. Host Mudiwa Gavaza is joined by Johan Gellatly, MD of Altron Fintech, and Dr Roelof Botha, economic adviser to Optimum Investment Group.
Last week, Gellatly’s company launched the Altron Fintech Household Financial Resilience Index (Afhri), which was created in partnership with Botha.
It aims to provide insight into “the financial state of households by assessing the state of micro-lending from the perspective of the ability of borrowers to repay loans”, the group said.
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Gellatly said their unit provides software solutions for micro-lending companies in SA. The idea for the index came after they realised micro-lending was important for many people in the country, but was often ignored or not given much consideration by the mainstream financial services sector.
Botha said Afhri is a composite index that considers 20 different factors and data sets, which adds to its overall accuracy. He hopes it will become a benchmark economic indicator in SA over time.
Topics of discussion include how the Afhri index was created; Altron’s reasons for creating it; key findings from the first index results; ways in which the data can be applied in business and economics; the importance of micro-lending in SA; and a preview of Altron’s other index, set to be released in September.
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• Business Day Spotlight is a MultimediaLIVE production.
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