My Passion with Danny Chamings: Going on holiday – and making a world of difference

The decision to work for Opportunity International in Malawi was a series of lucky coincidences.

Firstly, my wife, Nikki, was fortunate to get a place as a visiting doctor with an American paediatric HIV charity (Baylor International) so I decided to accompany her to Malawi.

Then a flight home from Kenya was delayed by 13 hours with an unplanned overnight stopover – not obviously lucky, but it meant that I ended up sitting next to the head of programmes for Opportunity International on the bus to the airport, who told me about the work Opportunity International does.

Finally, pwc decided that this was worth supporting and gave me an extra two weeks off work. This set me up to work for all

of June with Opportunity International Bank of Malawi (OIBM), the largest provider of microfinance in Malawi (providing loans and saving products for small amounts of money to people who would otherwise not be able to access finance).

They take their outreach activities very seriously, with an armoured bus that is used as a mobile bank, and a chip-and-pin device that can read finger- prints, so that even people who can't read can access banking.

OIBM needed help with risk management. Whereas in the UK a risk management team may look at identifying, assessing, mitigating and monitoring risks, the risk and standards team at OIBM spent most of their time making sure that processes were followed and that borrowers provided the right securities for their loans.

I spent most of my time with the risk and standards team understanding their approach to risk reviews and then delivering training on risk, to put the team in a position where they could understand and rate risk.

This was hugely rewarding as I got to see a lot of the business, from sitting in on job interviews for bank tellers to joining meetings with senior management where we looked at disaster recovery and incident management.

Throughout our time in Malawi, people were incredibly welcoming, and this was shown in many ways. At OIBM there was always someone keen to take me out for lunch, whether chicken and chips or the local dish of nsima (which is made from maize and looks a little like mashed potato).

The trip was a great learning experience – it had its challenges, but I found it hugely rewarding.

Danny Chamings, a senior manager in the risk assurance team at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (pwc)