Nov 21, 2008

Interview: Roger Frank of Developing World Markets on the Credit Crisis and Microfinance

Attention in the financial markets has been focused on the struggles of developed world institutions. To date, there hasn’t been much coverage of the impact of the financial crisis on microfinance--either on the flow of new capital to microfinance or the impact on MFIs that have borrowed money in hard currency while making loans in local currencies. Roger Frank is a partner at Developing World Markets, an investment banking and asset management firm specializing in microfinance, and has a front-row seat as the credit crisis increasingly impacts emerging market countries and microfinance. Roger spoke with Philanthropy Action recently about how the credit crisis is affecting investors and MFIs. 

Nov 17, 2008

Intervention that Works

Nov 17, 2008

Interview: MIT Economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee

Two of the world’s foremost development economists highlight the interventions they view as consistently effective and provide insight into where individual donors can make a true impact. 

Nov 14, 2008

The Credit Crunch and its Impact on MFIs

Very little has been written about the impact the current global financial crisis is having on microfinance, neither from the perspective of the MFIs nor that of their clients.

Nov 12, 2008

Financial Access and What the Poor Really Want

Campaigners for financial inclusion for the poor may be barking up the wrong tree by criticizing high-fees charged by informal financial services. Evidence suggests that fees charged by formal institutions are often higher in practice than in theory and are difficult to understand. Users of the informal services also seem to place a much higher importance on convenience than on cost. Lowering and simplifying fees and making services from formal institutions more convenient may have a much larger impact than fighting payday lenders.

Nov 03, 2008

Can Food Solve Everything?

Given the high-stakes now attached to agriculture in the form of both food inflation and global warming, China’s evolving agricultural policy will prove to be as crucial to the globe as America’s broken system has been over the last 25 years.

Oct 24, 2008

HIV Discoverer Advocates More Science for AIDS Eradication

Even the most optimistic concede that continued complacency toward the rash of new infections that occur every year will cause the worldwide disease burden to far outweigh the treatment possibilities for the foreseeable future.

Oct 18, 2008

The Real Impacts of Micro-Credit

Early analysis of results from the first randomized controlled trial on a micro-credit project calls into question a number of assumptions about microfinance as an overarching tool with impact on a wide range of development issues like education, health status and women’s empowerment.

Oct 18, 2008

What’s So Hard About Saving?

One of the many confounding questions of microfinance is why people don’t save more. The first blush assumption that the poor cannot save because they don’t have the money has been dis-proven by data. Surveys of household consumption among those living on less than $2 a day show that they spend a significant portion of their income on non-essential items. In many cases where savings products are available they are widely used, even when they are objectively terrible (negative interest rates, inconvenient). 

Oct 17, 2008

What Is It About Women?

There is no tenet of microfinance theory more fundamental than the focus on women. The marketing narrative is replete with reasons why a focus on women is sacrosanct. To quote Muhammad Yunus: “Women have greater long-term vision and are ready to bring changes in their life step by step. They are also excellent managers of scarce resources, stretching the use of every resource to the maximum.” And of course, we all “know” that women invest more in their households and children than men do. Get ready for a surprise.