National Microfinance Bank (NMB - Alwatani) is a Jordanian MFI registered as a private shareholding company and authorized by the Central Bank of Jordan to provide financial service for the targeted segments according to the best international practices in the microfinance industry.
The concept of NMB stems from His Royal Highness’, Prince Talal bin Abdul-Aziz’s initiative to establish banks for micro and small entrepreneurs throughout the Arab World. On the 27th of March, 2006, and under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania and His Highness Prince Talal, NMB disbursed its first loans in parallel with the opening of three branches. Now, Alwatani provides its services to more than 91,000 active clients through a net of thirty-five branches all over the Kingdom.
Alwatani’s vision is to be an organization that employs financial inclusion to provide optimal solutions to its clients towards a permanent improvement to their livelihood.
Since 2014, Alwatani started the process of digital transformation in its lending operations by providing credit officers with smart tablets (tablets) to facilitate the process of submitting loan applications during their field work to visit clients and their projects. This was in parallel with developing the loan system internally to facilitate and speed up the management of lending operations and credit approvals. Then, the development of a smartphone application to provide various electronic services to customers such as submitting loan applications, viewing the details of loans and payments, repaying loans and other e-services; which lead to launching the service of disbursing and repaying loans through e-wallets at the end of 2019.
To complement the project of digitizing the lending operations, Alwatani launched the service of disbursing and repaying loans through e-wallets in all its branches by the middle of 2020. The service that contributed to shortening the period of operations’ completion and facilitating that the beneficiaries can obtain the service within less than 24 hours, noting that the shortest time taken to disburse the loan is about 5 hours. This service came in response to the need of beneficiaries and target groups in various regions of the Kingdom to access financial services and complete payment operations; specifically during the surrounding circumstances resulting from the Corona pandemic (COVID19).
By the end of 2022, Alwatani has disbursed more than 101K loans through e-wallets with an outstanding portfolio of approximately JD 91 million.
In the 3rd quarter of 2022, Alwatani launched its first digital branch using a digital services kiosk installed in the branch. This branch is also considered the first digital branch in Jordan among the microfinance sector. Through the digital services kiosk, beneficiaries complete the lending process in no time from applying for a loan, signing their contract, repaying the installments, and even requesting official letters such as clearance and indebtedness certificates; in addition to many other services all available for the beneficiaries 24/7.
Alwatani was recognized for its achievements in digital transformation with an Honorable Mention in Responsible Digital Innovator, for the second year in a row, by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the SME Finance Forum.
