Modelling credit and savings behaviour of chit fund participants

Abstract

Chit funds are a form of Rotating Saving and Credit Association (ROSCA) prevalent in India. In this institution, a group of individuals pool in equal amounts of money at a fixed frequency, and at every time period a round of competitive bidding takes place among the individuals to identify a borrower for the collected amount. The borrower foregoes his/her right to participate in further auctions, but continues paying his/her share of the pool till every individual in the group has collected the pooled amount. The auction process relies on the bidders’ willingness to give up a certain amount of the pool and take the rest as loan. The amount given up at every time period is shared equally among all individuals in the group. A chit fund, therefore, is structurally similar to the modern formal banking and financial institutions: they act as an intermediary to optimally mobilize funds collected from savers to borrowers and manage repayment of loans from borrowers such that savers receive their dues at the appropriate time. The latter role exposes the industry to credit risk. Modern banking and financial institutions rely heavily on their ability to assess and mitigate credit risk; and, over the last century, they have been able to move from a system where risk assessment was based on human judgment and simple intuition to a system reliant on statistical and mathematical techniques. However, the standard chit fund company still relies heavily on human judgment for assessing risk. The pilot envisages a move towards a standardized statistical methodology for risk assessment and mitigation as the path ahead for the industry.