Building a microfinance platform to advance CARE Australia's mission

The challenge

CARE Australia is a leading international aid organization spanning 21 federation members working in 104 countries. It provides education and training, healthcare, clean water, nutritious food and emergency relief to 2.7 million people across 25 countries.

To advance its mission of providing entrepreneurial resources to low-income community members, CARE Australia needed a first-of-its-kind microfinance platform. The platform had to connect borrowers with FSPs and private lenders, all while meeting a demanding set of requirements.

The organization needed two distinct user portals, one suited to individual lenders and borrowers, and another built for FSPs, each with its own practical needs and expectations. The platform also had to satisfy Australia's strict governance and anti-fraud compliance requirements, as well as be delivered within CARE Australia's defined budget and timeline.

To meet this challenge, CARE Australia connected with consultants at TELUS Digital's Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) division.

The TELUS Digital solution

Within five months, the TELUS Digital ANZ team designed and deployed a best-in-class microfinance platform to facilitate lending between CARE Australia's beneficiaries, donors and FSP partners.

The team began by connecting closely with CARE Australia to build a comprehensive understanding of the nonprofit's key personas, user journeys, regulatory requirements and budget. From there, they used out-of-the-box Experience Cloud to stand up omnichannel user portals, one for lenders and borrowers, another for FSPs. This approach maximized persona-specific functionality while minimizing cost.

Automation was layered in to reduce manual data entry and administrative work across the platform. On the back end, the team custom-built components to ensure the FSP portal complied with regulatory and anti-fraud requirements specific to Australia.

The results

With the microfinance platform live, CARE Australia has a new way to advance its mission and a more efficient way to operate.

TELUS Digital delivered the platform within the company's timeline and budget, standing up self-service portals built for the distinct needs of lenders, borrowers and FSPs, and layering in automation to handle the data entry and admin work that once fell to CARE Australia's team.

With that infrastructure in place, CARE Australia is equipped to extend financial support to aspiring entrepreneurs, with less operational weight on the team doing that work.