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> Posted by Danielle Piskadlo, Senior Program Specialist, CFI
The Investing in Inclusive Finance program at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion explores the practices of investors in inclusive finance. Across areas including risk, governance, stakeholder alignment, and fund management, this blog series highlights what’s being done to help the industry better utilize private capital to develop financial institutions that incorporate social aims.
In 2003, the Council of Microfinance Equity Funds (CMEF) was formed by a handful of equity investors in microfinance with the goal of sharing, developing, and disseminating industry best practices in equity investing.
I recently had the pleasure of catching up with Jim Kaddaras, who was Vice President of Special Projects at Accion from 2001-2003. He was instrumental in launching the CMEF in 2003, and also led the charge on the creation of Accion Investments. Jim is now a Partner at Developing World Markets, and is still a Council member.
Q: What did the landscape of microfinance equity investing look like in 2003?
Jim Kaddaras: It wasn’t much of a landscape – it was more of a scatter shot.
Accion owned stakes in some of their Latin American affiliates and Accion Investments was just launching in 2003. Procredit was a player (they were called IPC back then and their banks had separate names). FINCA had some equity investments and ShoreBank had a smattering of equity holdings.
ProFund had been around since 1995 as the first investment company focused on microfinance equity but it was winding up when the Council started. Africap was just starting, based on the ProFund model. Various other Council members, plus the development finance institutions (DFIs) and several non-profit networks, held a handful of equity investments.
Q: What was the goal of the Council when it was formed?
JK: We felt that by gathering people who had been making equity investments in a one-off way, we could help to develop and disseminate best practices in the field.
> Posted by Andrea Horak, Program Coordinator, CFI
The Investing in Inclusive Finance program at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion explores the practices of investors in inclusive finance. Across areas including risk, governance, stakeholder alignment, and fund management, this blog series highlights what’s being done to help the industry better utilize private capital to develop financial institutions that incorporate social aims.
When you hear the word “democracy,” you probably think of equality, elected representatives, voting rights, and so on. You probably also think of specific contexts. In the United States, for example, many of its citizens pride themselves on living in a democratic country. But what about democracy in business? Or more specifically, democracy in microfinance institutions (MFIs)? Should democracy extend to the decision-making in their governing boardrooms?
Although good governance has become a top priority for microfinance investors, donors, and regulators worldwide (CGAP’s Microfinance Gateway lists it as a Hot Topic), the structures of boardrooms and views on governance vary from institution to institution, country to country, and continent to continent. None of these structures, however, seem to be “democratic” in the way we define the word – representative of all parties involved. For example, as we covered in a previous blog post, the Anglo-American model of governance empowers CEOs to also serve as chair of their corporate board, which can result in management dominance of decision-making.
At the CMEF’s most recent meeting in April in Lima, Peru, a portion of the discussion was dedicated to asking why the client voice is not heard in the boardroom. Although it was generally agreed that financial institutions should strive to incorporate clients at the governance level in some way, the response on “how” varied greatly.
> Posted by Center Staff
The Council of Microfinance Equity Funds (CMEF) is proud to issue its latest paper, “Growth in Commercial Microfinance: 2005-2008.”
This work by Preetesh Kantak illustrates the significant changes in the commercial microfinance industry over the past four years. Traditionally, growth studies, such as MicroRate’s annual microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) survey, have focused on growth in the assets of MIVs. This growth has been phenomenal, and of course strongly influences the MFIs in which they invest. The “Growth in Commercial Microfinance” series, of which this is the third publication, dissects and clarifies growth in the MFIs themselves – the actual investment opportunity-set. With this study, CMEF gauges the opportunities available to investors in MFIs.
The first study of this series, published in 2004, focused on the transformation process of NGOs and start-up MFIs into regulated, for-profit entities. A large part of this effort was the enumeration of guiding corporate governance principles and the impact that this new business model had on the sustainability of the institutions and industry. The second study, published in 2006, examined industry growth in the preceding two years, and explored the distribution of MFIs, borrowers and depositors by region.
In this latest installment, the author first analyzes the internal, “organic” growth of MFIs presented in the 2006 study. The report explores the increasing and more pervasive efforts at financial intermediation and how the growth of saving products have matched, if not exceeded, the growth of loan products. Read the rest of this entry »
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