For a few months, alarms have sounded across the board cautioning of an impending credit bubble. Are they warranted? 

On this episode of Making It, Hazem Moussa joins Patrick to break down how a bubble in the credit industry actually forms, what regulators should watch out for, the risks on both sides, and the responsibility that lies on the client side — us, the consumers.   

Hazem is the co-founder of Contact Financial Holding. He’s often credited as the architect of Egypt’s consumer finance industry. 

In April, Hazem announced that he’s stepping down from Contact after a 25-year run. So we begin with him taking us through his final days at Contact, how he planned his exit all along, and the difficult choices he had to make along the way. 

In the second half of the episode, he weighs in on the rapid expansion of NBFIs. On the one hand, the central bank has been tightening the screws on how banks fund non-bank institutions. And on the other hand, the lending train doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Hazem’s take is that there is no harm in being careful; as a community, we need to be cognizant of the risks, but regulators too need to respond by not “trying to control everything.”

Hazem was a guest on Making It back in 2019. You can listen to the previous episode here. 

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