Ewa Rachwal, an agent for International Personal Finance, right, visits a client, Irena Kowalczyk, at her home in Warsaw to make a loan.

By JULIA WERDIGIER

WARSAW - When Ewa Rachwal visits one of her 150 customers at home, she is greeted more like a long-lost friend than someone who comes to collect a weekly interest payment for a loan.
Ms. Rachwal is one of more than 28,000 self-employed agents for a British company, International Personal Finance, that serves as a lender to people of modest means in Central and Eastern Europe with little or no access to conventional banks. The company is thriving amid global credit market turmoil that has left many lenders with giant losses and writedowns.
While debt may be an unwelcome concept in the United States and Western Europe these days, it looks more attractive to people in Eastern Europe and elsewhere who are just getting a foothold in the consumer economy and are aiming for a better life.
International Personal Finance, or I.P.F., has figured out a means to tap that market the old-fashioned way, by extending credit face to face and then keeping a personal eye on its customers. Its agents visit people in their homes to better judge their creditworthiness before offering small cash loans that average about $500 for anything from washing machine repairs to family vacations.
Interest payments of about 20 percent attracted criticism from consumer groups and regulators, but the company insists such rates are necessary to pay for the home service and cover its risk. I.P.F.’s profit increased 40 percent this year and its shares, traded on the London Stock Exchange, have risen 52 percent at a time when the values of many American and West European banks are declining.
Christopher Rodrigues, the company’s executive chairman, calls I.P.F. the Avon of the financial services industry, a reference to the global direct seller of beauty products.
Mr. Rodrigues acknowledged that the company was not immune to the economic woes that beset other banking institutions, but its avoidance of complex financial models and its close contact with its 1.94 million customers allowed it to minimize its risk. While its write-down charges, at 22 percent of revenue, are substantial, it monitors its loans carefully and avoids surprises from huge, unexpected losses.
Balazs Pap, head of I.P.F. in Poland, said the business approach went beyond the computer-based credit checks that larger banks relied on. If “someone tells you over the phone they have one child,” he said, “and then you walk into the house and see three pairs of shoes in different sizes,” the agent knows something is wrong.
Ms. Rachwal, who has been offering loans for I.P.F. for the last eight years, said that when she visited a customer for the first time, she took a close look at the apartment and tried to find out as much as she could beyond the routine questions about the level of income and whether the household had a telephone.
I.P.F. also operates in the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Mexico and plans to expand into Russia, Ukraine and India. As economies grow, customers earn more and are willing and able to borrow larger amounts.
Profit at I.P.F. is growing rapidly mainly because it operates in a region whose credit markets are still relatively underdeveloped. In Poland, 40 percent of the population has a bank account compared with 90 percent in Britain.
Hanna Krzysiewska-Rybinska, a hospital dietitian who lives with her husband and his 90-year-old mother, said she needed money quickly to help her son, a taxi driver, buy a new car. “He can’t get a loan himself because he and his wife just bought a new house and they already have a big mortgage,” Ms. Krzysiewska- Rybinska said.
She borrowed 5,000 Polish zloty ($2,225) for two years. She now has to repay 95 zloty ($42) each week, which means after two years she will have repaid 9,880 zloty ($4,396). I.P.F.’s customers in Poland have an average monthly income of 2,500 zloty ($1,112).
“With the bank, I have to pay on a fixed date,” she said. “Here I have the flexibility to pay later.”