Loyalty of rural microfinance borrowers: International evidence

Abstract

The growth and financial sustainability of a firm is tied to its ability to retain existing and potential clients. On the contrary, the defection of customers has a huge implication on firms including microfinance institutions (MFIs), suggesting that the attainment of customer loyalty is an important strategy for MFIs to improve their performance. Hence, this study attempts to investigate the level of loyalty demonstrated by rural microfinance borrowers toward their respective service providers. To accomplish this, an unbalanced panel data, comprising 1101 unique MFIs and spanning the timeframe 2010–2018, were obtained from the World Bank database and thereafter subjected to conventional econometric techniques and a series of robustness tests, including endogeneity-corrected methods, alternative proxies, and sub-sample analyses. The findings indicate that rural microfinance borrowers generally demonstrate loyalty to their service providers, particularly when measured by borrower retention rates; however, these findings vary with the adopted techniques, sub-samples, and proxies employed during the analysis.