Report of the Findings from the LAPO Client Exit Study: Nigeria 2003

This paper describes a client-exit study that was designed to advance the implementation of the Life Above Poverty Organization (LAPO) imp-act project. The study aimed to:

• Find out the reasons for clients' withdrawal from LAPO;
• Serve as a learning process towards the development of imp-act assessment systems.

The study used:

• Quantitative surveys;
• Focus group discussions;
• In-depth individual interviews.

The data analysis focused on:

• The profile of the exit clients;
• Their responses to issues considered helpful and problematic during their years with LAPO;
• Possible relationships between these responses and the clients' rural-urban location, poverty level, business type and the number of loans they had taken before leaving LAPO.

The exit reasons, as per the analysis, included:

• Too small loans with too short interval between repayments;
• Inefficient loan disbursement;
• The burden of paying for others who had defaulted;
• Expulsion from unions;
• Poor business performance;
• Wrong client-targeting and inefficient service from staff.

Finally, the study highlights that:

• Loan size is an important factor;
• Wrong targeting of clients is a costly proposition;
• The inability of the staff to follow strict procedures of client selection led to the inclusion of clients who did not value the loan offered by LAPO;
• The distribution of ex-clients was skewed in favor of urban areas;
• The organization has now adopted a simple and regular client-exit monitoring procedure.