Research & Analysis

Introducing Savings in Microcredit Institutions: When and How?

Voluntary deposits as a source of commercial finance for microcredit institutions, has generated a lot of interest and debate in recent years.

Financial Sustainability, Targeting the Poorest, and Income Impact

Can microfinance institutions (MFIs) achieve financial sustainability and reach the poorest of the poor? What are the tradeoffs in pursuing these two goals simultaneously? These are among the key questions addressed by David Hulme and Paul Mosley in their recent book, Finance Against Poverty (London: Routledge, 1996). The findings of this book have sparked a lot of discussion among microfinance specialists. The objective of this note is to bring these findings to a wider readership. It is not a review of the book and should not be considered as such.

Regulation and Supervision of Microfinance Institutions

There is a huge unmet demand for financial services in the microenterprise sector. Despite some success stories, MFIs probably reach fewer than 5 percent of the potential clients.

Maximizing the Outreach of Microenterprise Finance: Emerging Lessons

The conventional view has held that microenterprise finance helps poor people and therefore is a desirable development activity but that it cannot be financially viable. Small loans, it is said, are simply too costly to administer, and the profits from such lending too meager to permit profitability. However, a study examining some of the best microfinance institutions concludes that this conventional wisdom is quite wrong.

The Missing Links: Financial Systems

The paradigms, approaches, and recommended actions outlined in this report represent a strong consensus among the world’s financial leaders who participated, the world’s leading microfinance institutions, and the world’s low-income entrepreneurs.