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Gail Buyske, Advisory Committee, Microfinance Information Infrastructure Project
> Posted by Center Staff
Several weeks ago we learned that MFT has suspended its operations. Moody’s has discontinued its Social Performance Assessment Program. The MIX is trying to increase revenue through its MixGold program. Should we care about these developments? What are they telling us about the state of microfinance’s information infrastructure?
The Center for Financial Inclusion undertook an analysis of these issues to follow up on Elisabeth Rhyne’s provocative blog of March 11, 2014, in which she argued that the microfinance industry needs an “infrastructure fix.” Today’s blog summaries the key issues, which will be discussed at a stakeholder discussion in DC on April 14, followed by one at a later date in Europe.
Let’s start by thinking about why we should care about microfinance’s information infrastructure. Information and its natural outcome, transparency, have been guiding principles of the microfinance industry practically since its inception. These are not just feel-good concepts: they played a fundamental role in the development of microfinance. Information and transparency were critical in microfinance’s early days in enabling donors and investors to identify promising MFIs that they could support. Readily available information enabled MFIs to benchmark their performance and set goals to improve their performance. And we can never forget that a commitment to transparency is a pact between MFIs and their clients.
> Posted by Elisabeth Rhyne, Managing Director, CFI
Nearly every industry requires infrastructure to thrive, and this goes for the microfinance industry too. But the infrastructure that the global microfinance industry has constructed over the past two decades is looking a bit shaky today. Infrastructure investments are urgently needed to keep the industry sound and prepare it for the future.
One could argue what exactly constitutes the microfinance industry’s infrastructure, and there are a range of organizations to choose from, but for this conversation, let’s look at several key organizations dedicated to setting standards and providing information for microfinance globally: the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), the four specialized microfinance rating agencies, the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF), Smart Campaign, and Microfinance Transparency (MFT). These organizations, which perform vital functions for the industry, arose during two different phases of microfinance industry development.
The first generation of organizations – MIX and the rating agencies – were created to provide financial transparency and standards, primarily so that investors could identify well-performing institutions, and also so microfinance institutions could evaluate their own performance against common standards. It took a lot of work to create these organizations. MIX had to find ways to incentivize MFIs to report and to devise a system for data quality assurance. The founders of the rating agencies – Microrate, Planet Rating, Microfinanza Ratings, and M-CRIL – took substantial personal risk in devoting their careers to promoting financial transparency in microfinance. Together, these organizations have helped spread financial standards throughout the microfinance industry and contributed to improving the financial performance of MFIs, enabling the entry of private social investors who now contribute very importantly to the funding of microfinance. We sometimes now take financial transparency for granted, but if these organizations were to stop playing their role in upholding it, adherence to standards across the industry would undoubtedly drop, with consequences for investor interest, which up to now has remained strong.
> Posted by Amanda Yap, Research and Communications, PlaNet Finance
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.
Before the advent of the People’s Bank of China’s county-level pilot program to create microcredit companies (MCCs) and village and township banks (VTBs), there was a large number of unbanked individuals and micro-entrepreneurs whom commercial banks were unwilling to serve. Hence when the pilot program to create MCCs, the product of a financial inclusion plan by the Chinese government, went into action in 2005 the number of MCCs boomed, and in the past few years they have mushroomed to an astounding number of 9,000 as of 2013. The Chinese financial sector has been plagued with corruption in the past few years – for example, the Wu Ying private lending network scandal and the Qilu commercial bank forgery in Shandong. To circumvent corruption and maintain control of the increasingly overpopulated sector, regulators enforce strict capital requirements and caps on interest rates. However, these requirements are stifling the operational sustainability of these MCCs. Joe Zhang, author of the book Inside China’s Shadow Banking: the New Sub-prime Crisis? writes, “The regulation is killing the dynamism of the sector. Everyone in the sector is working extra hard to make a modest return (after huge expenses and bad debts).”
Should 9,000 MCCs all be painted with the same regulatory brush?
Some industry leaders believe a rating system for microcredit companies is the answer. Liu Ping, Director General of the Senior Advisors of the People’s Bank of China, believes ratings can be a yardstick to measure the sustainability of microcredit companies and differentiate the good apples from the bad. MCC investors hope that high grades based on credible ratings could move the authorities to loosen restrictions on outlets, so that business costs could be better covered, individual company branches could grow, and the sector could eventually be made more sustainable. Conversely, low rating grades would expose institutions with questionable practices that require operational changes. In addition, a ratings system may change the popular perception that these institutions are “loan sharks”, leading to increased investment, institutional growth, and client outreach.
> Posted by the Smart Campaign
The Smart Campaign recently launched the Client Protection Certification Program (CP2). In designing the certification program the Campaign worked with many stakeholders in microfinance, and especially with the four specialized microfinance rating agencies, M-CRIL, Planet Rating, MicroFinanza Rating, and MicroRate. These four have been licensed by the Smart Campaign as certifiers and are now welcoming calls from organizations that wish to become certified.
We urge organizations that are scheduling ratings in 2013 – and that have strong client protection practices – to consider requesting a client protection certification at the same time as a rating. Here’s why:
- Assurance about client protection standards. Client protection certification treats client protection in more depth than ratings and measures practices against specific, industry-wide standards. The certification provides greater assurance that client protection practices meet these standards.
- Use of certification as a public mark of achievement. Client protection certification carries a message about an issue of public concern that can be shared with a broad array of stakeholders, including investors, the media, and even clients. It can be used to convey a simple and powerful message.
- Costs less and is less disruptive. Client protection certification was designed to work in tandem with ratings. When a client protection certification visit is combined with a rating visit it adds a relatively small amount to the cost of the rating, a cost that is much less than a standalone certification. And because only one on-site visit is needed, combining ratings and certification is less burdensome for the organization.
- Upgrading practices. The process of preparing for and passing certification assists organizations to upgrade their client protection practices.
> Posted by Elisabeth Rhyne, Managing Director, CFI
The following post was originally published on the Huffington Post Business Blog.
The global microfinance industry realized a significant and long-awaited goal this week with the introduction of Client Protection Certification as promoted by the Smart Campaign. With certification, lenders and banks for low-income people will be able to demonstrate — on the basis of an on-site, third-party evaluation — that they take adequate care to protect their clients.
As one of the founders of the Smart Campaign, my high hopes are that Client Protection Certification will become a kind of Fair Trade mark for the microfinance industry. If established as we envision, donors, investors, regulators, and even clients will check the certification registry before they invest in or bank with microfinance institutions, choosing the ones that meet the standards. This in turn will create positive incentives for institutions to improve, ultimately leading to safer, more respectful services for the low income clients microfinance reaches.
>Posted by Sergio Guzman
Today, we link to Accion Ambassador Juan Rubio’s post describing a social rating by Planet Rating at El Comercio in Paraguay.
Juan starts out with an interesting question–is measuring social performance similar to measuring love? How can it be quantified? Indeed, social performance can be an abstract concept and at times it seems a bit difficult to measure. However, there are Social Performance Standards have been specially designed in order to give us a better idea how MFIs are working not only towards the idea of improving clients life, but also making sure that their products are not making them any worse off.
Now, with some markets showing signs of saturation, managing social performance goals might be secondary for some bottom line focused institutions who might want to focus on their core business. Notwithstanding, this has proven to be a differentiating factor for many microfinance institutions like El Comercio who see this as a strategic objective. Or as we call it, Smart Microfinance.
Read the rest of Juan’s excellent post here and further stories from the field through the Accion Ambassadors blog.
Image credit:pastorgraphics.com
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