Rotating savings and credit association

A rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA) is a group of individuals who agree to meet for a defined period in order to save and borrow together, a form of combined peer-to-peer banking and peer-to-peer lending.

F.J.A. Bouman described ROSCAs as "the poor man's bank, where money is not idle for long but changes hands rapidly, satisfying both consumption and production needs." They are also known as tandas (Latin America), partnerhand (West Indies), cundinas (Mexico), hagbad (Somaliland), susu (West Africa and the Caribbean), hui (Asia), Game'ya (Middle East), kye (계) (South Korea), tanomosiko (頼母子講) (Japan), pandeiros (Brazil), juntas or quiniela (Peru), C.A.R. Țigănesc/Roata (România), arisan (Indonesia).

Meetings can be regular or tied to seasonal cash flow cycles in rural communities. Each member contributes the same amount at each meeting, and one member takes the whole sum once. As a result, each member is able to access a larger sum of money during the life of the ROSCA, and use it for whatever purpose she or he wishes. This method of saving is a popular alternative to the risks of saving at home, where family and relatives may demand access to savings.

Every transaction is seen by every member during the meetings. Since no money has to be retained inside the group, no records have to be kept. These characteristics make the system a model of transparency and simplicity that is well adapted to communities with low levels of literacy and weak systems for protecting collective property rights.

The system further reduces the risk to members because it is time limited—typically lasting no more than 6 months. Each member receives at least once the amount collected. This reduces the size of the loss, should someone take funds early and not pay back.

In addition to their simplicity of structure, ROSCAs compensate when two key conditions exist, which make them competitive alternative financial products, even in relatively sophisticated economies: 1- erosion of buying power of accumulated savings over long savings horizons in inflationary conditions and 2- failure of the normal financing market to provide credit to credit worthy borrowers, often due to opportunity cost, regulation, or operational expense.

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