Smart Campaign Certification

CreditAccess Grameen Limited (Formerly known as Grameen Koota Financial Services pvt. Ltd) has been honored by Smart Campaign as having met all the client protection principles. Smart Campaign is the globally recognized, independent, third party evaluation that publicly recognizes financial institutions that meet adequate standards of care in how they treat their clients. The Campaign enables financial institutions to demonstrate adherence to the microfinance industry’s client protection principles.

CreditAccess Grameen is one of the 6 financial institutions in world and one of the 3 MFI’s in India to have been bestowed with this honor. The Smart Campaign set of principles based on which the microfinance institutions are gauged include appropriate product design and delivery, prevention of over-indebtedness, transparency, responsible pricing, fair and respectful treatment of clients, privacy of client data and mechanisms for complaint resolution.

The campaign aims to creating a more stable microfinance industry by way of encouraging practices that aim to ensure prudent, transparent and respectful treatment of clients. The Client Protection Certification Program contains a rigorous set of standards against which institutions are evaluated by certifiers licensed by the Smart Campaign. The certifiers—Planet Rating, M-CRIL, MicroFinanza Rating and MicroRate – are established, specialized microfinance rating agencies with deep experience analysing hundreds of institutions.

The Client Protection Certification awarded by Smart Campaign in 2013 came up for customary review after two years and M-Cril in its check-in found CreditAccess Grameen compliant with the principles and upheld the sameCertification. It said Grameen Koota “continues to fully adhere to the Smart Campaign Client Protection Principles (CPP)” and renewed the validity of Client Protection Certification by two more years in 2015.