Kudos for Kiva

December 10, 2009

I just noticed that Kiva has revamped its individual loan pages. Here’s a screen shot of a loan page from March 2007 that I dug up (thank you nau.com), for a loan to Galib Asadov, a hairdresser in Azerbaijan:

And here’s a new loan page. Notice the How Kiva Works link, the clarity about pre-disbursal, and the up-front display of interest rate and profitability information. “Portfolio Yield” is a bit confusing, though I think I understand the motivation for the term. But I consider this an even bigger stride forward than the one I commended Kiva for in October:

Now if they would just stop making all the borrowers pose as “entrepreneurs.”

Footnote: The live page for Galib Asadov’s loan reports that it was disbursed 14 days after it was funded by Kiva users, seeming to contradict my writings about the prevalence of pre-disbursal. However, Kiva president Premal Shah tells me that at some point, probably in a database make-over, they inserted a 14-day-later disbursal date for most of their old loans, for lack of real data.

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