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> Posted by Kelley Mesa
Monisha Kapila, the founder and CEO of ProInspire writes about Elisabeth Rhyne’s latest book tour event on her blog.
The next stop on Ms. Rhyne’s tour is San Francisco, with an event on September 16 hosted by the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network. For more information, visit: http://svmn20090916.eventbrite.com/
To learn more about Ms. Rhyne’s latest book Microfinance for Bankers and Investors, click here.
If you missed the launch of Elisabeth Rhyne’s most recent publication, Microfinance for Bankers and Investors, you have a second chance to hear her speak ! WAM-DC (Women Advancing Microfinance – D.C. Chapter) is hosting a book talk tomorrow:
To enter a raffle drawing for a signed copy of the book, please RSVP to .
> Posted by Yilan Hu
I’m a Paganucci Fellow at Tuck School of Business this summer. First let me introduce myself. My name is Yilan Hu, and I grew up in China where my parents still live. Prior to coming to Dartmouth, I studied for five years in Singapore on a scholarship. I’m currently a rising senior with a double major in Economics and Mathematics at Dartmouth. I have developed a keen interest in development work, partly intrigued by China’s rapid economic growth and partly inspired by Singapore’s success story.
The Paganucci Fellows have been working on developing scorecards of the level of financial inclusion present in several countries. I, for example, worked extensively on the scorecard for the Philippines. When I first started working on the Philippines, I was told that it has been a pioneer in mobile banking. Admittedly, mobile banking was just a catchy phrase that meant little to me back then. However, through the research I’ve done, I’ve come to truly appreciate the huge potential of mobile banking as a vehicle to expand financial access. I’m found that mobile banking can significantly alter the outlook of this country’s basic financial products, such as credit, savings, and payments. For example, the cost of inward international remittances to the Philippines is as low as 1% of the transfer amount via mobile channels compared to about 5% through regular non-bank remittance agencies.
We also look at the concentration of bank branches and POS in countries to measure physical accessibility. While the Philippines does not have high bank concentration Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Kelley Mesa and Sergio Guzmán
As the Campaign for Client Protection revves up to officially launch this fall, we stepped out in Colombia to meet with and interview MFI leadership, staff, and clients and learn about what’s being done to ensure that client-protection practices at the heart of the six principles are making their way into everyday client interactions.
Client showing amortization schedule to Sergio.
During all of our interviews, one principle specifically stood out—transparent pricing. Here in Colombia the institutions we’ve visited have worked diligently to ensure that clients have the knowledge and access to resources to understand the terms and conditions of their loans.
In addition to a clear table of interest rates posted on the wall was a point-by-point description of the loan, applicable taxes, and applicable fees. One institution showed clients their requested amount, followed by the required deductions and their costs—taxes (in Colombia, they tax 4 pesos per 1,000 transaction—although the government allows for a person to exclude one savings account from this tax), credit check costs, etc—and then listed the exact amount that the client would receive. The funds are distributed ONLY after the client signs and fingerprints this document. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Charlotte Connors
I’ve just read today’s Wall Street Journal article about Microfinance ‘Bubbles.’ Having recently entered the field of microfinance myself, it occurred to me that while the Journal called attention to an important issue, there is one crucial point that the they overlooked. The microfinance industry is tight. It’s like a large extended family – one that acknowledges challenges and deals with them. One such challenge is that of how to keep clients as the central focus of this fast-growing industry, and the industry has addressed this challenge in a collaborative and proactive way.
Twenty-seven industry leaders and more than six hundred MFI’s, Investors, Donors, Networks and Associations have gotten behind the Campaign for Client Protection in Microfinance. First announced at the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2008, the Campaign, under the leadership of the Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), seeks to unite microfinance providers worldwide to develop and implement standards for the appropriate treatment of low-income clients, based on six principles, which the Campaign aims to embed within the fabric of the microfinance community. The first of these principles is avoidance of over-indebtedness (which has the subject of the WSJ article). Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Kanika Metre
As so detailed from Elisabeth Rhyne‘s latest book, in roads into financial inclusion are being made all around us. To showcase some of these organizations doing their part of expand access to financial sevices, the Center will profile financial inclusion enablers each week.
This week, we’re starting with a group we’ve recently discovered called Credit SMS. The organization seeks to reduce transaction costs and expand accessability to microfinance, specifically through the use of Short Message Service (SMS) -aggregating software and mobile commerce systems to provide an efficient and accessible platform for MFIs to deliver and track loans. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Kelley Mesa
The Campaign for Client Protection’s Self Assessment Guide is now available in Spanish. You can download it here.
La guía de auto-evaluación de protección al cliente está ahora disponible en español. Puede descargarla acá.
> Posted by Emily Leeding
When asked to write a blog post, I laughed. What in my life is possibly related to financial inclusion? And then I realized – Ozzie.
Let me set the scene – I recently purchased my first home. “STRIKING VICTORIAN ROWHOUSE- AMAZING POTENTIAL” said the ad. I was hooked. The ad did not lie, but did neglect to mention the hours upon hours one will spend scrapping paint and sanding staircases to unleash that striking Victorian-ness. Fixer-upper was an understatement, but, being a bit of do-it-yourselfer, I had forgone the more traditional contractor approach and began my new night and weekend job.
Ozzie came into my life one afternoon when I was confronted with one of those “it is too heavy for me to move” moments. Recommended by a neighbor, I quickly realized what a gem I had found in Ozzie – the all around knowledgeable handyman. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Joshua Goldstein
What role can microfinance organizations play in helping to bring access to financial services to people with disabilities? The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities emphasizes that people with disabilities should not be treated as “objects” of charity but as “subjects” with rights, who are capable of living productive lives and contributing to society.
This shift in perspective sounds remarkably similar to the way that the perspective about the poor transformed in the seventies when the microfinance revolution took off. The poor, long viewed as objects of charity, became “subjects” determining their own destiny, fueled by loans to lift themselves out of poverty, rather than as lifetime wards of first world philanthropists.
Today, the WHO estimates that roughly 10 percent of the world’s population (650 million people) lives with some kind of disability, 80 per cent in low-income countries. There is a clear association between poverty and disability. Yet, the Millennium Development Goals where it is never even mention disabilities. Activists in the disability community are lobbying to rectify this situation. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Kanika Metre
ACCION International has recently been highlighted by GOOD Magazine’s Roadmap to Harmony— “an interactive roadmap to see how we’re currently doing as a society, learn about efforts to improve the situation, and find actions you can take to help steer us toward a better future.”
In the blog post, “Creating a Microfinance Culture,” published on the GOOD Magazine blog yesterday, ACCION International is lauded as a microfinance nonprofit that “thinks big in very small increments” and “is leading by example though cutting-edge pilot projects.”
To read the entire blog post, click here.
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