Purpose This study aims to investigate whether microcredit programme has a positive impact on productive poors. Several areas of investigation include clients’ borrowing behaviour, level of savings and before-and-after psychological well-being comparison. Design/methodology/approach A case-study survey of 398 clients of a microcredit programme run by a charity organisation in Jakarta, Indonesia, was conducted in 2012. Descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation analyses were then performed to show the variation of different variables among the respondents and how they correlate with socio-demographic indicators. Findings The result shows an indication that microcredit brings positive impact on the clients’ welfare; however, the effect is not linear and there might be an optimum borrowing frequency. Moreover, the output also suggests that age, level of income and level of savings are three important determinant of borrowing behaviour. Research limitations/implications Although the result can be justified, it is necessary to be cautious about its generalisability because of limited number of sample and non-randomised sample selection. Originality/value Although the microcredit programme examined in this study has been operating since 2010, there is by far no comprehensive study to assess its impact on the welfare of the clients. This study attempts to fill in the gap by providing an analysis on how microcredit programme increases the welfare of the clients. In addition, as part of the continuous improvement programme, the study also identifies a number of factors that might indicate the clients’ borrowing behaviour.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected economies around the world, including the banking industry, and this depends on various factors. The aim of this study is to understand the influence of COVID-19 independently and through the moderation of bank capital ratios on changes in loans of Association of Southeast Asian Nations 5 (ASEAN-5) banking industry players. The study uses a sample of 86 banking companies listed on the stock markets of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand from the first quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2020 by employing the panel data regression technique. The results showed that COVID-19 had a significant negative effect on changes in bank lending. However, a bank’s capital ratio was not found to play a role in moderating the effect of COVID-19 on changes in bank lending. These findings have three main implications: (i) the role of the government in recapitalization and liquidity injection can eliminate differences in behavior between banks with the classification of capital ratios; (ii) there are no signs of zombie lending in ASEAN-5’s banking industry; and (iii) regulating incentives to change bank lending behavior in future crises must take into account that bank capital categorization will not be effective. AcknowledgmentThis study was made possible with the support of a research grant by Universitas Indonesia number NKB-533/UN2.RST/HKP.05.00/2022.

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