With more than nine years’ experience as micro-mortgage specialists, we still find that Cambodian people are faced with a lot of problems in buying/selling property. Such problems include buying land or a house that has no recorded history, buying from an illegal property developer (Boreys), land or houses with duplicate titles, accepting soft title even though the original title is hard or transferring ownership at the village/commune level to avoid tax duty, etc. These issues are risky for purchasers and could result in losing the right to owning their properties. Limited knowledge of property buying/selling, managing or transferring legal ownership creates such problems.
First Finance saw the need to address this and with support from Microfinance Initiative for Asia (MIFA), cooperated with partners and experts from related ministries to create an educational campaign for the public on reducing the risk of buying and selling property. The campaign started in late 2018 and ended in 2019. This cooperation culminated in holding a public workshop, providing staff training, setting up a call-center and developing an educational animated infographic video, and a TV show.
Animation video
Tips for buying a house, key points for risk awareness in buying property and selecting a financial institution to help financing a house purchase for first-time buyers were summarized and developed into attractive animation videos. The videos aim at helping the audience to quickly gather awareness and have a greater understanding of house purchase. Initial videos were first shared on First Finance social media – Facebook and YouTube – which can be accessed by all smartphone users nationwide and are being liked and shared.
Four videos were produced in 2019 and were viewed more than 100,000 times.
Call-Center
As part of the campaign, a call-center was set up by First Finance and went operational on 25 February 2019, to provide free consultation on property issues to First Finance clients and the public. In addition to the call center number, First Finance also accepts questions through social media as we understood this is commonly used by the public.
TV Show
First Finance appeared on an existing program that runs on MyTV, a popular TV channel in Cambodia. Eight shows on Risk Awareness of Buying/Selling Property were recorded and broadcast on the MyTV every Monday from 19:00 to 20:00 for two months (April – May 2019). The shows were also shared on the official Facebook page of the TV channel and First Finance.
Each show was viewed more than 3,000 times on average.