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• Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services.
• Microfinance refers to a movement that envisions a world in which low-income households have permanent access to a range of high quality and affordable financial services offered by a range of retail providers to finance income-producing activities, build assets, stabilize consumption, and protect against risks. These services include savings, credit, insurance, remittances, and payments, and others.
• Most MFIs started as not-for-profit organizations like NGOs (non-governmental organizations), credit unions and other financial cooperatives, and state-owned development and postal savings banks. An increasing number of MFIs are now organized as for-profit entities, often because it is a requirement to obtaining a license from banking authorities to offer savings services. For-profit MFIs may be organized as non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), commercial banks that specialize in microfinance, or microfinance departments of full-service banks.
• Microfinance has been growing rapidly with $25 billion currently at work in microfinance loans. It is estimated that the industry needs $250 billion to get capital to all the poor people who need it. The industry has been growing rapidly, and concerns have arisen that the rate of capital flowing into microfinance is a potential risk unless managed well.
• Microfinance must be useful to poor households: helping them raise income, build up assets and/or cushion themselves against external shocks. "Microfinance can pay for itself."
• Subsidies from donors and government are scarce and uncertain, and so to reach large numbers of poor people, microfinance must pay for itself.Microfinance means building permanent local institutions. Microfinance also means integrating the financial needs of poor people into a country's mainstream financial system.
• In the late 1980s microfinance institutions developed in the US. They served low income and marginalized minority communities. By 2007 there were 500 microfinance organizations operating in the US with 200 lending capital.Microfinance history in Canada took shape through the development of credit unions. These credit unions provided financial services to the Canadians who could not get access to traditional financial means. Two separate branches of credit unions developed in Canada to serve the financially marginalized segment of the population.
• The mission of microfinance institutions is to increase access to credit. Microfinance institutions serve entrepreneurs who live or work in low-income neighborhoods, who are unable to receive traditional financing from banks. Organizations may target new immigrants, aboriginals, mental health and addiction populations and other marginalized groups.Microfinance in the U.S. context is defined as the extension of credit up to $35,000. In Canada, CRA guidelines restrict microfinance loans to a maximum of $25,000.
• Microfinance is particularly inappropriate for the destitute, who may need grants or other public resources to improve their economic situation. Grants are a more efficient way to transfer resources to the destitute than are loans that many will not be unable to repay. Too much risk is placed on the MFI and client, when the only way a client can repay a loan is by starting a successful business.
• Microfinance’s success in terms of scale and poverty alleviation has drawn the attention of financial markets. A study by Krauss and Walter (2008) found that microfinance institutions (MFIs) had limited exposure to systemic risk due to low correlation to international capital markets. They also found MFIs were significantly less affected by macroeconomic shocks than commercial banks.
• Microfinance institutions have long had faith in their profit potential; investors are starting to respond. By the end of 2007, microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) had over US$ 5 billion assets under management. As of December 2009, there were 91 active MIVs with total assets of US$ 6.2 billion.
• India is one of the most promising markets for microfinance in the world.

• What Is a Microfinance Institution (MFI)?
• What Is a Microfinance?
• Microfinance

Institutions

• Institution from Africa
• Institution from Bangalore
• Institution from California
• Institution from Gujarat
• Institution List
• Top Institutions list
• Microfinance Institutions

Investments

• Appraisal Guide for Microfinance Institutions
• The Business Case for Investment in Microfinance
• Investment in Microfinance Equity: Risk, Return, and Diversification Benefits
• Finance for the Poor:
  Microfinance Development
  Strategy
• Microfinance Investment
  Vehicles Disclosure
  Guidelines
• Hedging Foreign Exchange Risk in Microfinance Investments.
• Financial performance of Microfinance institutions of india

Process

• Microfinance Investment Funds – Analysis of Portfolio Impact
• Evaluation of Microfinance pilot project for HIV affected families
• A methodology for assessment of the impact of microfinance on
  empowerment and vulnerability
• Knowledge Products of
  Microfinance A Synthesis of Consolidated Replies
• Effect of Microfinance Operations on Poor Rural Households and the Status of Women
• Microfinance Transformation Process in Kosovo: Legal Aspects
• Building Sustainable Microfinance Institutions in India
• Analysis of the Effects of Microfinance on Poverty Reduction

Roles

• Role of Microfinance in the Household Reconstruction
  Process in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• The Role of Microfinance
  in Rural Micro enterprise
  Development
• Role of Microfinance institutions in rural developement
• Assessing the Role of Microfinance in Fostering Adaptation to Climate Change
• Role of Microfinance Tools in Disaster Risk
  Reduction: A Study in India, Bangladesh and Sri
  Lanka
• The Roles of Microfinance, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability
  in Reducing Poverty in Developing Countries
• The potential role of Microfinance institutions in mobilizing savings: Lessons from kanya and uganda
• The role of Microfinance banks in the promotion and development of entrepreneurship in semi urban and rural areas
• The Roles of Microfinance
• Microfinance – Important Role in Economic Growth

Technology & Patent

• Transforming Risk-Averse Banks into Microfinance Champions in a Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Environment
• Evolution of technology: Application in Microfinance
• Exponential Growth In Microfinance Through Technology: Experiences from South America
• Impact assessment methodologies for Microfinance: Theory, experience and better practice
• Information and Communication Technology and Microfinance: Options for Mongolia
• Microfinance Methods
• Overcoming Obstacles
  to Agricultural Microfinance:
  Looking at Broader Issues
• Microfinance Intervention for Financing Solar Cooking Technologies – Financing with Savings
• Microfinance fund aggregation for a retail investor

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Banks

• Central Bank Support for
  Microfinance Initiatives
• Bank from German
• Bank from Karachi
• Bank from Maharashtra
• Bank from Nigeria 1
• Bank from Nigeria 2
• Bank from Philippines
• Global Bank

• India Microfinance investment environment profile
• Status of Micro Finance in India
• Microfinance in India:
  Discussion
• Existing Legal and Regulatory Framework
  for the Microfinance Institutions in India:
  Challenges and Implications
• Micro Finance in India
• Technical note for financing Microfinance in india

Policy Standards

• Microfinance policy forum models
• National Micro-Finance policy
• Microfinance policy: Rewind or turnaround
• The NGO microfinance standards
• Microfinance policy and strategy for the bank group
• Policy, Regulatory and
  Supervisory Environment for Microfinance in Tanzania
• The Microfinance institutions (Development and Regulation) bill, 2011

Consultant

• Consultant from Chennai
• Consultant from Delhi
• Consultant from London
• Consultant from Washington
• Consultant from Yemen
• Consultant from New York

Study

• Annotated Bibliography
  microFinance studies
• The Social Life of Microfinance Projects: Brokerage and Resistance.
  A Case Study in South India
• Empowering Women through Microfinance
• Microfinance SectoMicrofinance Sector
  Recovery Study
• Microfinance Regulation in Seven Countries:
  A Comparative Study
• The Transformation of the
  Microfinance Sector in India

Project

• Feasibility study of a Micro-finance intiative in the Jhabua District of Madhya Pradesh
• Microfinance and Microfranchising: A Feasibility study
• Nepal: Rural Microfinance Project
• Sustainability of rural development projects
• Feasibility Study: Micro Finance Programme, Chhatarpur: Empowerment of women through Micro Finance

Report

• Commercial Banks in Microfinance: New Actors in the Microfinance World
• Microfinance Institutions
  in Andhra Pradesh
• Guidelines for Designing Poverty-focused Projects with Microfinance Components
• Microfinance in India: Twin Steps towards Self-Regulation
• A New Beginning for Microfinance in India?
• M-CRIL’s anatomy of the Indian Microfinance Crisis
• Ghana: Microfinance Investment Environment Profile
• Microfinance Donor project questions

Market

• State of Microfinance Investment The MicroRate 2010 MIV Survey
• Developing sustainable Microfinance systems
• Making Microfinance Investment Responsible
  – State of the Practice in Europe
• Global Microfinance Investment Congress
• Macro potential for
  Microfinance Industry
• Microfinance investment vehicles an emerging asset class
• The State of Microfinance Investment 2011
• The State of Microfinance Investment

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