The data relating to the economic activity of self employed non-professionals are difficult to capture and over the years very little has been done to define formal parameters that can determine the credit worthiness of these people who are predominantly employed in the un-organised sectors like Vegetable Vendors, Retail Shops, Home repair services etc. However the need for credit in these sectors is acute to meet the daily working capital requirements of these individuals. But then being in the unorganised sector the demand for services fluctuates thus disrupting the cash flows of even the most organised of these individuals thus invalidating any credit histories that might have been built up. In the absence of a sound credit history Banks are wary of lending to this sector. The need for credit in these sectors has been met largely by private money lenders who lend money based on the faith they repose in a person. The accompaning terms of such lending activity are usually harsh on the individual. The lending rates are exhorbitantly high and the collections are usually on a daily basis owing to the operational nature of the unorganised sector. 

NBFCs can play a vital role in tapping this segment to provide short term liquidity or long-term financing by 

Opportunities to lend should have a beneficial impact on the bottomline to take advantage of the interest arbritrage by offering financial services at a cost affordable to the customer. This is possible if the workflow in credit decisioning is automated and there is minimal manual intervention. Additionally there should be rigour in the credit decisioning to lower the incidents of fraudulent advances that can become Non Performing Assets (NPA's) . The AnyBank product suite provides tools to accomplish this.