`Building a nation from below’

In the US, a loan servicer is a public or private entity that collects, monitors and reports loan payments; handles property tax; handles insurance escrows; forecloses defaulted loans; handles late payments and other delinquencies; remits payments; and assists in originating loans.

ABS-CBN Bayan Foundation president Eduardo A. Morato Jr. is now transforming the foundation’s loan servicers or loan officers into social and enterprise development officers.

After 10 years as a microfinance institution (MFI), Morato believes ABS-CBN Bayan is ready to take its development efforts to the next level.

“We want to spearhead a national movement for building this nation from below, that is, from the level of micro- and small entrepreneurs. ABS-CBN Bayan is in a good position to catalyze this movement,” he said.

A full professor at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Morato obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Economics degree, cum laude, from the Ateneo de Manila University, his Master of Business Management (MBM) degree from AIM, and his Doctor of Public Administration degree from the University of the Philippines. It has been his lifelong advocacy to combine the needs of the corporate world or big business with the needs of the development community, including micro enterprises.

Graduating at the top of his MBM class in 1972, Morato declined his dad’s urging to join San Miguel Corp. which paid three times the average MBM graduate’s starting salary. Instead, he joined the Department of Agriculture and earned less than the average pay as a consultant.

Stints with the World Bank followed government duty and Morato found himself serving in Africa, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Asia and the Middle East either as a loan officer or as an investment officer. When he returned to the Philippines, he gravitated toward teaching, as well as consulting, and focused on banking and finance, development management and entrepreneurship at AIM, where he was dean from 2000 to 2002. He was dean of the W. SyCip Graduate School of Business from 2001 to 2002.

From 1988 to 1992, Morato was the director and subsequently the associate dean of the Development Management Program, the forerunner of the Center for Development Management (CDM), which was launched in 1995. As the program champion of both CDM and ACE, he designed and developed the socially relevant and responsive Master in Development Management (MDM) for leaders and managers in government and private voluntary organizations, as well as the innovative Master in Entrepreneurship for small and medium scale entrepreneurs, which was introduced in 1999.

Today, Morato revels in his work at ABS-CBN Bayan, calling foundation work “tailor- fit” for him.

“I love challenges. Observing MFIs led me to ask: If microfinance is an anti-poverty measure, why do the borrowers remain poor? It’s because the loans are used for home consumption. The borrowers are not elevated to microentrepreneurs. This is why they are not getting out of poverty,” he said.

Thus, new ABS-CBN Bayan programs designed to uplift borrowers’ lives by turning livelihood financing into microenterprises, and microenterprises into small enterprises, were developed.

“ABS-CBN Bayan is not into lending and collecting. We are into delivering quality service so that the children of our microentrepreneurs can get better education and live healthy lives. We are not evaluating our field personnel based on quantity or the amount of money they are lending and collecting. We are focusing on quality, not quantity.”

As social and enterprise development officers, the former loan servicers are now tasked to monitor the assets of borrowers and are personally dedicated to make these assets and the net worth of borrowers grow. They are monitoring the education and health of the borrowers’ children as well to ensure they are indeed improving compared to the baseline survey that was done earlier. Through ABS-CBN Bayan’s “Sanayang Panghanapbuhay at Kabuhayan,” spouses and adult children of the mostly women borrowers learn skills that will allow them to contribute to the household’s income.

Under this skill-building program, 25 borrowers’ children — some of them unemployed college graduates — were recently trained to improve their English skills and 20 already found jobs, 17 of them in call centers. “This is certainly a very good batting average, considering that only three in 100 applicants are hired by call centers,” said Morato.

Morato said his real measure of success will be when the 2.3 million women borrowers of all of the country’s MFIs have become micro- and small entrepreneurs.

For inquiries, call 410-3453/ 927-9365, or text 0920-3047690, or e-mail: [email protected].