Mifos X – Robust Financial Service Engine
Mifos X is a robust core banking platform that is delivered via the cloud or hosted on premise. It provides the functionality and scalability to scale horizontally across any form of financial inclusion and vertically for an organization of any size. Mifos X is powered by the Apache Fineract platform and provides a suite of web and mobile apps that you can configure and extend to meet your needs.
- Portfolio Management – Innovation and Agility are critical in financial services. Our centralized product configuration engine supports a vast range of credit, deposit, and share-based products for groups, individuals or businesses allowing you to innovate on the fly and rapidly respond to customer demand.
- Client Management – Owning your relationship with the customer is critical. The customer account is at center of Mifos X allowing you to uniquely identify, know, and assess risk of your customer and attach any type of financial service or collect any type of data for them.
- Business Management – Efficiency and Transparency are vital to your success. Mifos X provides a robust accounting package that fully integrates with your portfolio and can act as a stand-alone system for your entire general ledger. Pentaho integration provides enterprise-level business intelligence and the ease of creating customized reports.
- Mobile Delivery & Enablement – The future of financial inclusion is digital and we’re ready to help you go mobile. Mifos X provides rich set of staff and customer-facing mobile apps for field-based and branchless operations and self-service interactions from your customers. Our robust self-service APIs and web hooks framework allows you to go branchless and rapidly integrate with mobile money and digital financial services.
Institutional Information Management
Mifos X can be deployed for the use of a variety of financial institutions. The platform supports a broad range of entities or operational methodologies – Banks, Credit Unions, SACCOs, Cooperatives, Credit Societies, Microfinance Institutions, Savings Groups, Peer to Peer Lenders, and Asset Financers. No matter your means of operation, Mifos X is easily customizable to fit the needs of your financial institution.
We wanted the Mifos X platform to be scalable to have the ability to support extremely large financial institutions. So, with Mifos X, there is no restriction on the number of accounts you can create. The user can configure unlimited savings, loans, and share accounts. Don’t let your business be restricted by an un-scalable platform, instead, grow your business with Mifos X.
Mifos X supports office hierarchy up to an unlimited depth of levels to support a single complex operation or multi-organization support structure. Customize user permissions by both position and individual. Restrict those from performing tasks they are not qualified for, and allow administrative access to higher ranking positions.
With Mifos X, the user can manage branch offices, groups, and banking centers with ease. The system is centrally administered such that new products and system-wide changes can be rolled out in real-time. The architecture of the Mifos X platform is fully multi-tenant such that one can achieve economies of scale by running off of one instance of the application with separate databases.
Mifos X, going back to our Grameen Foundation roots, was purpose-built for Grameen-Style group lending. The system fully manages the group structure of an financial institution. The platform offers support for Center & Group Hierarchy with ability to track important features such as attendance, accounts, membership, and calendars at each level.
Products are available to all offices or can be mapped to specific branches or offices via our entity mapping module. Mifos X supports Groups, Centers, Organizations in an unlimited hierarchy allowing for multiple organizations to run on one platform or multiple branches. Assign availability of loan products, savings products, and charges to specific offices.
Loans
With such a broad range of loan products, Mifos X can be customized for the needs of any lending institution. Our loan products include: SME Loans, Agricultural Loans (Variable Installments), Village/Savings Group Lending, Personal Loans, Multi-Tranche (Housing Loans), Bullet Loans, and more. You can support any unique lending program that you’d like with automatically generated repayment schedules or variable installment loans in which you can fully control and configure the repayment schedule.
On top of individual loans, Mifos X has been designed to fully support the various group lending methodologies including Grameen-style group loans (single loan to entire group with a common amount), group loans with individual monitoring (loan to entire group but ability to track individual amounts) and joint liability group loans (individual loans amongst members of a group but with a collective guarantee). All are tracked in our loan cycle counter supporting the graduation of clients through loan programs.
Every loan product provides the following options for configuration: amortization (equal installments or equal principal payments), interest rate method (flat, declining balance and declining balance with interest re-calculation), interest calculation period, configurable payment application logic, configurable rest and compounding periods, configurable rules for handling advanced payments, moratoriums, grace periods, and arrears tolerance settings.
To help manage your loans, use some of our loan tools such as: Collection Sheets, Bulk Loan Reassignment, Reassign Loans Between Branches, Payment Types, and Loan Reschedule. These tools provide the Mifos X user with the necessary support to maintain and supervise their loans.
Risk Management Tools
Mifos X offers the ability to track client behaviors to identify potential risk areas. Additionally, the user can score credit based on criteria set up by the organization. Using our data tables and reporting framework, one could configure their own homegrown credit score within Mifos X. Our web hooks framework allows the seamless integration with external credit scoring tools. Numerous Mifos partners use Mifos X as the system of record connected to their machine-learning, algorithm-based credit analysis engines.
The organization may establish collateral parameters by loan type or by individual client. Other account holders can use funds to guarantee loans. The percentages and amounts are dependent upon the individual financial institution’s policies.
Mifos X supports the automatic provisioning of bad debts/underperforming loans into their respective expense account for loan losses. The user can create four different categories for loan loss provisioning for any selection of loan products – Standard, Sub-Standard, Doubtful Loan, and Loss. For each of these four categories, the user can define the number of days a loan is overdue or in arrears, the percentage of the overdue amount that gets provisioned into the loan loss account, and the specific general ledger accounts that get debited and credited for each loan loss provision.
Loans can be written off in Mifos X and automatically moved into NPA status based on the number of days in arrears.
Via the full set of APIs and the Mifos web hooks framework, customers can be seamlessly verified against external lists such as credit bureaus based on the level of access provided by the external system – integration can be done in real-time or via flat files.
Loans can also be rescheduled and/or restructured in one of four ways – by extending the loan term with extra installments, by changing the repayment date of future installments, by providing a moratorium or grace period mid-term, and by applying a new interest rate for the remainder of the loan.
Productivity Tools
The Mifos X user has access to this collection tool for group or individual lending at group or center levels. Mifos X supports bulk entry of repayment data to save the user time and maximize efficiency. Our bulk collection sheet module allows staff to efficiently do all the data entry for the respective groups and centers they’re meeting with that day.
With Mifos X, the user can approve loans individually or in bulk. Approving them in bulk allows the user to save time and maximize efficiency.
Mifos X offers the capability of re-assigning the entire loan portfolio of one loan officer, branch, or center to another. Active or inactive, individually or in bulk.
Mifos X supports branch to branch loan transfers. This allows the user to efficiently manage their loans with the correct branch overlooking their progress.
Using the task box that Mifos X supports, the user can create, approve, and disburse both clients and loans in bulk.
With Mifos X, the user can graduate clients to more advanced loan products by specifying the amount, rate, and term per loan cycle. The Mifos system supports tracking of clients as they successfully repay off loans. It is at both the product level and the loan account level.
With Mifos X, payments can be configured to be set as Standing Instruction to pay from the guarantor’s account or the borrower’s account.
The Mifos X user can define simple approval workflows for clients, loans, and savings by the ability to define and require data tables to be captured at specific lifecycle stages.
Customer Support and Communications
Through our SMS bridge, Mifos X connects with any SMS gateway using our web hooks framework. We provide an out of the box connection with Twilio with instructions to configure with your gateway of choice. This SMS bridge supports our outbound event-based SMS messages which allow SMS to be automatically sent out based on configured events (i.e. receipt sent out when a payment is completed, notification sent out when loan disbursed, notification sent out when loan approved, etc.).
The Mifos X platform can be configured with any email providers to send messages to staff or customers.
With Mifos X, the user can send automated event-based messages (meeting/payment reminders/receipts) to clients triggered by the Mifos web hooks.
Using Mifos X the user can set up, send, and manage the delivery and receipt of bulk SMS campaigns to segmented groups based on simple business rules and filters.
For every action performed in the system, actionable notifications and alerts can generated and sent to staff via the web apps and mobile apps for staff and clients. These notifications are fully configurable with a topic/subscriber model to determine which staff receive notifications enabling you to provide an activity-driven user interface for staff to quickly respond to outstanding tasks.
Secruity & Internal Control
Mifos X provides a comprehensive audit trail of all historical system actions and transactions that been executed or attempted to be performed that is highly searchable to perform any necessary audits, internal control procedures and roll back and edit data accordingly. The full audit trail can be searched by the following parameters: ID, User, Date, Resource ID, Status, Action, Entity, and Office.
The Mifos X platform utilizes action related permissions, e.g. read, create, update, and collect them in roles. A role is assigned to an user providing needed permissions to use the system. It is not possible to override permission on a per-request basis, all permissions are stateless, so every request determines the roles/permissions a user got granted.
In addition to this granular role-based permissioning, the Mifos X platform provides maker-checker (4 eyes) capabilities to ensure proper access to data all throughout the organization.
Mifos X follows the AAA protocol for information security. Authentication is handled by OAuth2 and basic HTTPs. Each user has a unique user ID and authentication credentials which are subject to configurable policies requiring a minimum length of credentials or duration of time in which credentials will expire.
For both our web and mobile apps for staff, Mifos X provides Two-Factor Authentication requiring the entry of a one-time password sent via email or via SMS to the mobile device of a system user. Messages sent can be fully configured and a remember me token can be generated allowing users to bypass two-factor authentication on trusted devices.
Mifos X supports configurable password expiration policies. Additionally, the lengths and preferences of passwords are easily customizable.
Accounting
Mifos X supports automated posting from portfolio accounts to corresponding GL accounts. Mifos X delivers the financial accounting needed to meet and exceed the requirements of investors, regulators, and stakeholders.
A standard Chart of Accounts is shipped with Mifos X. This can be fully customizable for the entire general ledger to fit the requirements of the organization. Opening balances can be migrated over in one step.
The Mifos X platform supports both cash and accrual accounting, following best business practice. Both upfront and point-in-time accrual accounting methodologies are supported by Mifos X.
Mifos X supports the setup and configuration of advanced accounting rules allows for the mapping of transactions by specific payment type, mapping fees and penalties to different income accounts, and more.
For frequently occurring journal entries like payroll expense or rent expense, frequent postings can be figured to automated these entries and improve data integrity.
Mifos X provides a robust financial accounting module that provides configurable financial mappings. Graphical user interface for configuring financial mappings is available, along with advanced accounting rules for mapping transactions by payment type.
The Mifos X platform supports standard financial reports. Use the reports to publish your financial institution’s income statement, balance sheets, and cash flow statement.
Mifos X offers the ability to easily generate account numbers for client, loan and savings accounts. Use the account numbers to better organize the data your financial institutions has stored within the Mifos X platform.
Accounting Closure Periods can be configured and scheduled such that the books are closed and no further transactions can be made until closure entries and reconciliations have been completed.
Mifos X offers full integration with the portfolio for automated and rule-based postings. One chart of accounts is maintained for the entire financial institution allowing manual journal entries to be performed for any general ledger account allowing Mifos X to be used as a stand-alone accounting package if so desired.
The Mifos X platform, allow the user to obtain full General Ledger and journal voucher entry support. Compound and single journal vouchers are supported with the ability to add any additional information required for legal and business purposes.
System Administration
With the Mifos X web hooks framework, the platform can be easily integrated with a rules, decisions, or workflow engine. Currently a number of partners have utilized our web hooks and APIs to integrate with third party credit scoring providers such as First Access. Additionally, via our web hooks and standing instructions, one could easily configure the payment of a national health insurance premium via a savings account.
Deposit products can be capitalized monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually via a batch job or manually posted from the account. With Mifos X, the user can schedule a job, manually run, modify or delete batch jobs.
Reporting
Mifos X ships with more than 60 standard reports which can be augmented using our custom reporting tools.
Apart from the more than sixty standard reports that ships with Mifos X, we provide a clean and well-documented data schema and a number of tools to build customized reports for varying levels of complexity and varying levels of user ability.
For both AML and FATCA requirements, Mifos X provides an open centralized database. Mifos runs on the Linux stack with a MySQL database so there is no need for costly server or database licenses.
Reports within the Mifos X platform can be quickly run and then easily exported to various formats including HTML, PDF, Excel, and CSV.
For simple screen-based HTML reports on the fly, we have a stretchy reports module which allows a new report to be generated by simply pasting in a SQL query
Pentaho Business Intelligence suite allows the Mifos X user to collect any form of data on their financial, social, and demographic data on their clients and score it based on their chosen dimensions. Mifos X is fully integrated with the Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite such that complex custom reports can be designed and embedded in MIfos X along with the ability to do data mining, data warehousing and online analytical processing. By building a custom report using the Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite and the Mifos X database as well as external sources of data, one can generate the necessary Basel II and Basel III rations and requirements for regulatory reporting.
The Mifos X user can have a unique role-based dashboard that best suites their operations and access. Maintaining a personalized dashboard increases the efficiency of the user and manages their permissions.
In addition, we have a templates module providing a mail-merge/WYSIWYG editor for producing user-generated documents which can be embedded anywhere in the workflow.
Transactional Accounts
Standing instructions can be configured by the Mifos X user to make loan payments or other account transactions.
Overdraft privileges can be configured on current accounts with the ability to define overdraft limits and charge interest on the balance.
Mifos X supports current (checking) accounts. The accounts are easily customizable to fulfill the needs of the financial institution.
Share and Equity Accounts
These accounts are specifically for financial co-operatives. The share accounts can be easily configured based on the needs of the business.
Mifos X offers full support for financial cooperatives to calculate and pay share dividends based on shares of equity owned.
Mobile Field Operations
Designed for field officers to interact with the Mifos X platform from the field. It is used extensively by our global community and also extended and customized by partners. This app gives financial institutions the full power of Mifos X wherever they are by allowing field-based staff to handle all their daily operations from onboarding new clients and accounts to collecting repayments and deposits, and surveying clients in the field. Supervisors can now ensure greater efficiency and transparency with field operations.
For field officers heading to remote areas, they sync their handheld device at the office, head out to the field to conduct business and sync upon their return to the office. This allows field officers to carry out their operations even in locations without a strong connection.
Self-Service Operations
Our modern API-driven architecture allows you to easily make the transition to digital financial services by seamlessly integrating with payment platforms, mobile devices and emerging technologies.
This Android-based app provides the ability for any financial institution to offer an online banking smartphone app to their clients. Clients can directly interact with their own financial accounts and perform the following tasks: view account details, apply for new loans, repay loans, transfer funds between savings accounts, transfer funds to other members. All these transactions can be performed directly to the phone and without having to physically go to a branch or meet a field officer, enabling branchless operations and digital financial services right through the smartphone.
Web application for clients to access and directly interact with their own accounts using Apache Fineract Self-Service APIs. Clients can authenticate themselves and perform the following operations: view own savings/loan account details, transfer funds between their own accounts, transfer funds to other clients at same organization, apply for new loan accounts, and repay loans.
Savings Accounts
Some of our savings products include Basic Savings Accounts, Passbook Savings, Mandatory Savings, Interest Bearing Savings, Term Deposits, Recurring Deposit Term Accounts, Share Accounts, and Custom Savings Programs. With such a variety of savings products available, Mifos X can be adopted for the use of any financial institution.
The Mifos X platform fully supports basic passbook savings accounts for mandatory or voluntary savings programs at the center, group, or client level for single and multi-currency. Products are administered centrally with flexible parameterization around nominal interest rate, interest compounding period, interest posting period, the ability to enforce a minimum balance, define a lock-in period, charge a withdrawal fee or charges of other types.
Mifos X supports savings accounts to fit the organization’s requirements. Some featured accounts are: Basic savings, interest bearing savings, and mandatory savings. Additionally, MIfos X fully supports a broad range of savings and or deposit accounts including current or transactional accounts, share accounts with support dividends, and fixed or term deposits with the same centralized configuration engine powering our loan products.
Mifos X supports a full range of standing instructions to automate transactions on a periodic basis (daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly) between the following types of accounts: transfers between a client’s own current and savings accounts, savings to savings transfers between clients across the entire financial institution, loan repayment from a savings account on the repayment due date. Standing instructions can be assigned varying levels of priority for order of execution. Savings accounts can be defined at the group and or center level as well. For each savings or deposit account, the min, max interest, balance, or balance for interest can be defined. Dormancy and inactive settings can be defined with the ability to define when funds are escheated.
Mifos X fully supports both term and recurring deposit accounts with the same degree of flexibility and parameterization as our savings accounts through our centralized product configuration engine. For deposit products, specifically, there is the ability to automatically renew the deposit product upon maturity or assess a penalty for premature closure and to automate the deposit via a standing instruction. Configurable interest rate bands based on length of the maturity period can be defined and set up for different periods of time. Recurring deposits follow the same design with the ability to specify a deposit frequency. As with all of our products, they are fully integrated with the general ledger accounts for automated financial accounting integration.
With Mifos X you have access to a variety of savings tools including: Recurring Deposit, Standing Instructions, Interest Calculation, Dividend Calculation, and Receipt Printing. Use these tools to help manage your savings accounts and reach their full potential.
Client Management
Mifos X fully supports KYC requirements, allowing you to store customer photos and signatures and upload a range of identity documents which can be searched and catalogued by their unique identifiers. Personal data is protected through strong KYC tools, layered account verification and the security built into the architecture of the platform itself. Fully compliant with any country’s Know Your Customer rules and regulations.
Any type of additional information for a client can be capture via our data tables or surveys modules. Data tables allows you to create custom forms to capture any type of data for any entity within Mifos X. Surveys including the PPI and other SPM frameworks can be defined and captured within Mifos X. Notes are supported within each client. Currently on our roadmap is basic CRM functionality for complaints handling and case management. Accounts and loans will tie into master client account.
Personal data is protected through strong KYC tools, layered account verification and the security built into the architecture of the platform itself. Better protect and manage your clients with tools such as online photographs, online signatures, online identification documents, online document storage, and data tables.
Use tools such as Client Monitoring, Credit Scoring, Document Templates, and Product Mix to analyze the risk your client poses. Review new customer applications prior to opening accounts with a customer approval process and blacklist clients no longer eligible for services with the Customer Blacklist tool. With the Client Risk Analysis tool, the user has the ability to track client behaviors to identify potential risk areas.
Throughout our community, numerous Partners have built mobile applications which directly foster financial education.
Surveys including the PPI and other SPM frameworks can be defined and captured within Mifos X. Integration with the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) scorecard available for all countries. Use the MPAT (Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool), which provides measurable data analytics and client insight to assess the impact Mifos X makes in financial inclusion.
