Understanding the clients we serve and their needs is what has made us. CUMO started in the year 2000 as a livelihood project in United Purpose (UP), then known as Concern Universal, working with 100 farmers. United Purpose was, at the time, helping the farmers to increase output from the limited land they had. As productivity increased, the famers sold the surpluses they made and requested for a mechanism through which excess cash could be mobilised and safely saved.  In response to this request, a savings and loans facilitation service christened “Chikwatu” (named for a locally made tool that serves as a preserved vegetable bank) was introduced. Not long after this, the farmers requested for access to external loans to supplement what they could access through their savings. This led to the introduction of microcredit services over and above  savings facilitation service. The project then became a full microfinance program “Concern Universal Microfinance Operations” abbreviated CUMO. CUMO is the name by which our  the Clients came  and continue to know us. DfID (UK’s Department for International Development) provided the initial funding for the lending program and is thus a model sustainable intervention of DfID in Malawi. More and more rural people started to join the program and activities expanded to adjacent districts such that it was decided to transform the program into an autonomous microfinance institution from Concern Universal in 2005.

In 2007, CUMO was registered (incorporated) as a not for profit company and is currently reaching over 72,000  rural people (83% of whom are women) from 23 districts of Malawi.  CUMO is a licensed  and prudentially regulated non-deposit taking provider  of financial services including small loans, and facilitation of savings and micro insurance. It uses a unique ‘community based’ branchless and cashless service delivery model that entails:

1. Placing loan officers, internally known as Financial Services officers (FSOs), within the communities they serve
2. Transacting with clients through partnering banks  and their agencies and other collecting agents thereby eliminating the handling of cash by CUMO and its staff.

This service delivery model enables CUMO to expand outreach rapidly and at low costs, bringing its financial services to the doorsteps of the rural and excluded poor.