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Growth patterns suggest a ‘maturing’ sector (cont.)
Source: MicroBanking Bulletin No. 18, http://www.themix.org/. The data covers 487 MFIs in 78 countries, representing 82% of outstanding loans and 75% of worldwide MFI borrowers as at the end of 2007.
Growth in borrowers & portfolio Shift to commercial funding
Source: forum for the future, “new horizons: creating value, enabling livelihoods.” 2007.
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…and increased interest from big commercial players
Source: forum for the future, “new horizons: creating value, enabling livelihoods.” 2007.
Increase in local competition amongst MFIs
Increase in competition from local commercial banks
Growing interest of international banks and investors
Greater transparency, allows for measurement and benchmarking of financial performance
Increasing role played by microfinance rating agencies
Recent trends
Current issuesOn the positive side: Growing industry – number of institutions & clients. Largely survived the food (2007) financial (2008) and economic (2009) crises. But challenges remain: economic turmoil, approx. 2.5 billion people still don’t
have access.Weakness & downsides: Development impact – does it really help the poor? Excessive (or not?) profit-making behavior
Cull, Demirgüc-Kunt, and Morduch (2007) define mission drift as
‚… a shift in the composition of new clients, or a reorientation from poorer to wealthier clients among existing clients.‛
Armendáriz and Szafarz (2009) define mission drift as
“ … a phenomenon whereby an MFI increases its average loan size by reaching out wealthier clients neither for progressive lending nor for cross subsidization reasons.”
The poor need a variety of financial services, not just loans. Just like everyone else, poor people need a wide range of financial services that are convenient, flexible, and reasonably priced. Depending on their circumstances, poor people need not only credit, but also savings, cash transfers, and insurance.
Microfinance is a powerful instrument against poverty. Access to sustainable financial services enables the poor to increase incomes, build assets, and reduce their vulnerability to external shocks. Microfinance allows poor households to move from everyday survival to planning for the future.
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CGAP: Principles of microfinance (cont.)
Microfinance means building financial systems that serve the poor. Poor people constitute the vast majority of the population in most developing countries. Yet, an overwhelming number of the poor continue to lack access to basic financial services.
Financial sustainability is necessary to reach significant numbers of poor people. Most poor people are not able to access financial services because of the lack of strong retail financial intermediaries. Building financially sustainable institutions is not an end in itself. It is the only way to reach significant scale and impact far beyond what donor agencies can fund.
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CGAP: Principles of microfinance (cont.)
Microfinance is about building permanent local financial institutions. Building financial systems for the poor means building sound domestic financial intermediaries that can provide financial services to poor people on a permanent basis. Such institutions should be able to mobilize and recycle domestic savings, extend credit, and provide a range of services.
Microcredit is not always the answer. Microcredit is not appropriate for everyone or every situation. The destitute and hungry who have no income or means of repayment need other forms of support before they can make use of loans.
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CGAP: Principles of microfinance (cont.)
Interest rate ceilings can damage poor people’s access to financial services. It costs much more to make many small loans than a few large loans. Unless microlenders can charge interest rates that are well above average bank loan rates, they cannot cover their costs, and their growth and sustainability will be limited by the scarce and uncertain supply of subsidized funding.
The government’s role is as an enabler, not as a direct provider of financial services. National governments play an important role in setting a supportive policy environment that stimulates the development of financial services while protecting poor people’s savings.
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CGAP: Principles of microfinance (cont.)
Donor subsidies should complement, not compete with private sector capital. Donors should use appropriate grant, loan, and equity instruments on a temporary basis to build the institutional capacity of financial providers, develop supporting infrastructure (like rating agencies, credit bureaus, audit capacity, etc.), and support experimental services and products.
The lack of institutional and human capacity is the key constraint. Microfinance is a specialized field that combines banking with social goals, and capacity needs to be built at all levels. Most investments in the sector, both public and private, should focus on this capacity building.
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CGAP: Principles of microfinance (cont.)
The importance of financial and outreach transparency. Accurate, standardized, and comparable information on the financial and social performance of financial institutions providing services to the poor is imperative. Bank supervisors and regulators, donors, investors, and more importantly, the poor who are clients of microfinance need this information to adequately assess risk and returns.
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Some latest findings: the story vs. the reality
The story: ‚Microfinance funds creation and expansion of microenterprises, producing additional income that lifts the borrowers’ households out of poverty.‛
The truth, naturally, is more complicated. One problem is the complex issue of causality – Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) is still new to this field.
The verdict is still out on whether microfinance reduces poverty on average (i.e. not making some poor worse off the way credit cards made some middle income consumers worse off).
Income may not increase, but ‚consumption smoothing‛ is a benefit.
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The real benefit of microfinance
The problem with being poor is not just that income is low, but also that it tends to be uneven and vulnerable to disruption. Given the variability and vulnerability of their income, poor households have to save and borrow constantly in order to put food on the table and meet other consumption needs.
Since informal credit and savings mechanisms tend to be unreliable, microfinance customers value formal microfinance highly because it is more reliable, even if it is often less flexible than their other tools to manage their cash flow.
Millions of microfinance customers are ‚voting with their feet.‛
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Looking at microfinance from ‚capabilities approach‛
Applying Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach as described in ‚Development as Freedom‛ to microfinance leads to some interesting issues:
Good research question: when does microfinance gives people more control over their lives and when less?
Also, from the perspective that development is a tool for institution-building, one important contribution of microfinance is the enrichment of important institutions: enhancing social cohesion, encouraging civic participation, etc.
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Microfinance in Thailand: some preliminary findings from field research
‚Grassroots finance‛ in ThailandThere are 3 kinds of players in Thailand’s ‚grassroots finance‛ space
1. State-owned banks: Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), Krung Thai Bank, Government Savings Bank, Government Housing Bank
2. Semi-formal groups (set up as government’s initiatives): 78,013 Baht 1 million village funds (some upgraded to ‚community banks‛), 1,227 saving cooperatives, credit unions, and saving-for-production groups. The assets of these groups total approx. Baht 900 billion.
3. Informal groups (set up as villagers’ own initiatives): one-Baht savings groups, one-Baht expense reduction groups, etc. Total assets approx. Baht 30 billion.
Semi-formal groups and informal groups serve approx. 12 million people.
Some preliminary findings from field research Very few grassroots finance groups in Thailand aim to make financial
profits. Most only want to ‚safeguard‛ their capital and fulfill social mission. Therefore, financial stability remains more important than profitability.
Many of the groups’ concerns are governance issues, e.g. the difficulty of finding ‚new blood‛ to succeed directors, lack of accounting training.
Benefits to clients from savings-based groups seem to be more tangible in the form of welfare (e.g. childbirth stipend, sickness allowance, funeral rites allowance) paid from clients’ collective savings. Operational sufficiency is major risk.
Benefits to clients from loan-based groups are less clear. Major risk lies in the inability of clients to use loans to raise living standards. Delinquency is not so much a problem since most clients ‘refinance’ from other groups.
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Key characteristic, by grade
Greatly increases financial
and/or quality of life of clients
Strongly sustainable financiallyA
B
C
D
Reasonably increases financial
and/or quality of life of clients
Reasonably sustainable
financially
Increases financial and/or
quality of life of clients
Financial sustainability
doubtful
Cannot gain trust from members
High risk of financial
unsustainability
Creates solid linkages of finance-employment-welfare
Efficient and transparent financial management
Enables members to have working capital
Has member information, guarantor system, audit system
No non-performing loans
Enables members to have working capital
Unsound/unclear accounting
Expands too aggressively
Has non-performing loans
Excludes villagers, not transparent
Borrowers and guarantors do not repay
Major results
Has member information, guarantor system, audit system
Characteristics of Thai grassroots finance groups
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Village A village fund
Village B village fund
Village bank
Village C village fund
Women lending group
Savings group
Islamic savings group
District financial institution
Money lender
BAAC branchGSB branch
Rubber plantation
Fruit plantation
crops
Shops
Local ‚wall street‛ in Nakon Si Thammarat
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Village A
Village
Bank
Village A
Savings Group
Village A
Village
Fund
200 clients from
outside Village A
300 members
vouch
money
voucher,
guarantor
Community financial group A
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Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Financial
groups in
network
Village B
Village Fund
money
Community financial group B
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Saving Group Dmember
membermember
member
group
directors
money
knowledge,
audit
Village A
Saving group
member
membermember
member
group
directors
member
membermembergroup
directors
community
business
Saving group network in Nakon Si ThammaratVillage B
Saving group
Village C
Saving group
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1 3 6 9 12 3
Baht
1
Loans from
village fund
Loans from
another
source
Crop income
Cash inflow Cash outflow
Expenses: household
expenditures & agri investment
20,000
Assuming normal crop year without
natural disaster, monocrop plantation
5 rounds of rice farming in 2 years, 30
rais of land
Month
Savings
Farmer’s cash flow example: Chainat province
Case study: comparison of financial performance
Financial Performance Indicators 2007Savings Group
Preliminary field research findings Few village banks are focused on generating profits. Most aim to
financially break even (‚safeguard funds‛) and focus more on social performance. Financial stability is more important than profitability.
Many concerns/risks are management issues: difficulty to find new directors, some groups don’t have enough knowledge of accounting, resulting in accounting numbers not reflecting real performance.
Key risk of savings-focused groups: insufficiency of funds to provide welfare esp. funeral payouts in light of annual dividends & aging pop.
Key risk of lending-focused groups: inability to use microcredit as leverage out of poverty, resulting in no reduction in debt burden (low NPL figure due to constant refinance e.g. from informal loans).
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Members’ quality of life
Financial sustainability
low
Highly accessible for poor people – High risk of NPLs & low financial sustainability
High refinance rate & low NPL ratio - Group is financially sustainable, but members’ quality of life hasn’t much improved
High interest rate - Group is financially sustainable w/ enough profits for dividend/welfare payout, but very hard to access for poor people
Low loan/deposits ratio - Group is highly financially sustainable, but members’ quality of life hasn’t much improved
Highly accessible for poor people - welfare expense rises faster than deposits, low financial sustainability
high
low
high
Financial sustainability vs. members’ quality of life