AMMAN – The concept of a social savings association has
existed for as long as many Jordanians can remember, with mothers usually
spearheading the effort of planning their sons and daughters’ financial
futures, from the southern Badia, through the urban centers, all the way to the
rural north.
اضافة اعلان
People would organize into groups and give a rotating
treasurer portions of their income on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The
treasurer changes with each round of deposits.
This traditional form of such a group is usually known as an
Association of Persons (
AOPs), where in these persons can be legal or natural
entities, as in establishments or individuals. The specific form of an AOP in
which all participants are individuals is often referred to as body of
individuals (
BOIs).
These persons and individuals are brought together by a
common objective, which in this case is the facilitation of savings, social
collaboration, and financial planning.
In Arabic, this form of AOPs and BOIs is called a “Jam’iyeh”
which literally translates into to “association”, or in some specific cases
“society”.
The concept itself is relatively foreign to the world of
financial technology (FinTech), especially at the social level. Though it
somewhat resembles pension and investment funds, this form of association is
usually short-term, not exceeding a year.
Families in Jordan, as well as across the Arab World, have
often resorted to savings associations to help finance their household needs;
from buying new land, cattle and home appliances, to construction, weddings,
new cars, and just about anything the family needs.
Within corporate settings, the practice also takes place
among employees to help cover substantial upcoming payments or finance their
households rather than resorting to banks and loans.
So far, it has worked, and though many prefer not to
reinvent the wheel, a number of young Jordanian entrepreneurs from Madaba and
Amman thought maybe they should.
In the conventional savings AOP, there is always the risk of
someone falling behind on payments or just disappearing after their turn comes
to cash in the money. Although it is less likely to occur in a traditional
social setting, such as the neighborhood community or family, it could possibly
occur in the not-so-conventional corporate workplace.
The core pillar of these associations is trust, both in the
persons participating and in the association itself, as an organization, CEO
and Cofounder of Kemlat Suleiman Tous told
Jordan News.
“With new technologies at hand, we can facilitate a safer,
easier and more secure mechanism for such associations, while turning them from
unofficial BOIs to AOPs, by involving the employer in the savings association,”
he explained.
Kemlat, is a Jordanian entrepreneurial limited liability
technology solutions company, officially registered in 2020, introducing a new
FinTech solution, aimed at organizing and securing savings AOPs in a corporate
setting, for now, through a smartphone application that is connected to the
company’s human resources administrator on the back end, according to the
company CEO.
The founders of Kemlat first started working on their
project back in 2019, and have since gone to market with a pilot operating at a
select number of companies in Jordan, in preparation for their big launch in
the next few months.
Suleiman Tous, Omar Mango, Mohammad Saed, and Mohammad
Moneer have a strong sense of what works in their sector and what does not.
“Kemlat — the idea — has been under development for more
than a year, and the application for some 9 months, and is now up and running
live,” Tous added.
Two other competitors in Jordan and Egypt have immerged and
since then disappeared, which Tous explained as due to the fact that these
applications lacked the security that Kemlat provides by working through the
employers’ own HR administrator.
“Involving the HR admin makes the whole association process
safer and more organized. Aside from our technologically advanced application,
which was developed in partnership with a Jordanian employee-owned cooperative
company, this is our most effective advantage,” he underlined.
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