University Meets Microfinance – serie

Microfinance 2.0 examines the role of reputation-based intermediaries on the world’s largest peer-to-peer online lending platform. This marketplace as well as other recently opened lending websites allow people to auction microcredit over the Internet and are in line with the disintermediation in financial transactions through the power of enabling technologies. To mitigate severe information asymmetries in anonymous online transactions, the platforms allow lenders to delegate the screening of potential borrowers and the monitoring of loan repayments to designated group leaders. Thilo Klein provides an in-depth study into the mechanisms of these credit information networks and critically assesses their potential to ease access to finance for the credit-constrained during the US credit crunch.

Investments in microfinance by institutional investors are growing. The investors benefit from a dual return investment opportunity by balancing financial and social returns. Yet, commercial microfinance institutions tend to focus on their financial performance. Reaching out to wealthier clients while crowding out poorer clients enhances their profitability - a phenomenon called mission drift. Pim Engels has analysed the data of 600 microfinance institutions operating in 84 countries and presents now new insights to the phenomenon of mission drift. Based on his findings investors can recognise and prevent mission drift taking place amongst the microfinance institutions in their portfolio.

The recent global macroeconomic crisis creates an exceptionally interesting possibility to investigate the linkages of the microfinance sector to mainstream markets and its connections with domestic markets as well as international markets – a subject whose significance has increased in recent years due to the growing importance of microfinance as part of local financial systems of developing countries and with more and more involvement of commercial investors. Sascha Huijsman's book is one of the very few studies on this relationship. She provides a rigorous analysis of the impact of the financial crisis on microfinance institutions (MFIs) by using data from a worldwide survey with MFI managers and utilising monthly financial data of almost 60 MFIs. Although microfinance-specific characteristics, such as socially oriented, highly committed investors and the nature of microfinance enterprises, which typically operate in the informal sector, so far nourished the assumption that MFIs were isolated from the impact of fluctuations on mainstream markets, Huijsman's study convincingly shows that through different linkages microfinance is to a certain extent connected to formal market movements Interestingly, however, it turns out there are considerable differences between the impact on MFIs in different regions; especially MFIs in Eastern Europe have been affected. Moreover, MFIs offering savings services to their clients turned out to be more resilient to the crisis. Huijsman's study provides plenty of unexpected results and certainly is a must-read for practitioners and researchers in the field of microfinance.

Low income households are faced with various types of risks, increasing their vulnerability to poverty. In Cambodia, conditions of the rural poor - with the majority engaged in agriculture - are characterized by low productivity, limited capacities in terms of land and assets, volatile income sources, fluctuating farm input and output prices, debt and lack of credit worthiness. A microfinance institution operating in rural Cambodia and aiming to offer financial products to a large number of poor households is Angkor Mikroheranhvatho Kampuchea (AMK) Co. Ltd. Through its internal Market and Social Research Department, AMK staff annually collects socio-economic information about selected loan clients (household profiles, cash-flow analysis), as well as non-clients as a control group. Their survey tool includes questions about household’s food consumption, main risk sources and coping strategies. The present research study draws information from this AMK survey database. The measures taken are applied to socio-economic cross-sectional data as of 2006/07 and validated with panel data from 2008. A theoretical framework is developed to examine the mechanisms through which the effects of the AMK services on its clients influence the household’s ability to manage risk. It includes measurement aspects of a forward-looking concept of vulnerability to identify and capture its linkages to risks, shocks, and risk strategies of rural households. Secondly it incorporates the dynamic aspects of poverty by looking at temporal changes in absolute poverty levels. Moreover, it seeks to identify gaps and opportunities of microfinance services as a risk management strategy to reduce vulnerability. The results show that the fraction of vulnerable households (85%) facing a risk of poverty is considerably greater than what the static poverty assessment suggests. Results further show that the majority of the sample households are poor (72%) as of 2006 and 2007. Among the non-clients the figure is substantially lower with 58% poor households, whereas 75% of the AMK microfinance clients fall below the poverty line. This particular confirms the intended outreach targets of AMK. Furthermore, it could be ascertained that those clients who remained clients could significantly accumulate assets and became less dependent on agricultural activities. This is a good indication that AMK clients have safety nets and more strategic possibilities in case of future shocks.

Why does a large proportion of India’s urban poor choose to pay for private health services when public services are essentially free of charge? Drawing from previous research, this study takes the underprovision of the medication component in public health packages as a starting point. Field evidence shows that patients in public health facilities often have to get external medication, whereas private hospitals offer a menu of pre-specified care packages. Thilo Klein contributes an answer as to why the poor choose to go private by investigating their risk-aversion and demand for insurance in the choice of health facilities. In discrete choice experiments on maternity care in the slums of Hyderabad, the author finds that the lowest income group attaches significantly higher importance to “full medication” maternity care packages. In line with Expected Utility theory, the study further finds empirical evidence that this insurance demand of the poor is partially explained by their risk-aversion. The findings suggest that an effective pro-poor policy should provide insurance cover for medication-related expenses. They have significant implications for the provision of public health care to the poor and are important for policy-makers and health management alike.

In the traditional financial system, profit and social solidarity have often represented a dichotomy hard to beat. In this scenario, the Microfinance Investment Vehicles (MIVs) are emerging as tools to build a bridge between private and social interests, increasingly in recent years, despite the fact that the world economy has been shaken by a strong global recession. After clarifying the often confused meaning of MIVs, Maria Cristina De Lorenzo utilises financial indicators like returns, Jensen's alpha, Sharpe Index, Treynor Index, Beta, R-Squared to analyse the performance and the risk of a sample of ten MIVs over the last three years. She compares the results obtained to three benchmarks representing the overall equity market (Morgan Stanley Capital International World Index), the socially responsible investment market (Dow Jones Sustainability World Index), and the emerging bond market (J.P. Morgan Emerging Market Bond Index Global). Her study demonstrates that, in general, MIVs outperformed the benchmarks. They can successfully improve portfolio diversification because there is no positive correlation with broader markets (Beta parameters are next to zero). Ultimately, De Lorenzo aims to provide ways of research defining standard indicators of social performance associated with such investments in order to reinforce the idea that ethically and socially responsible funds are both a great financial and social opportunity for all involved.

As stated by the Brundtland Report, the authoritative document on sustainable development, the pressure of poverty creates environmental stress by factors like overcrowded cities, deforestation, and overuse of marginal land. Alejandro Turbay, Funmilayo Akinosi, and Daniel Nordlund sought to find out how microfinance institutions (MFIs), who inherently cater to a largely poor clientele, could maximise their socioeconomic missions within ecologically beneficial limits. Turbay, Akinosi, and Nordlund defined sustainability through the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, a systematic, five-level approach for planning and making decisions. Subsequently, they created a principle-based model of their vision of a ‘sustainable MFI’, and then tested this model with executive-level practitioners of various microfinance institutions around the world. In this book, they present their findings: - The acceptance of ecological considerations into socio-economic missions is growing. - More and more 'green' funds are helping to turn environmental challenges into investment opportunities. - MFIs operating within ecologically beneficial manners can derive advantages including credit risk reduction, enhanced reputation, increased competitiveness, and improved earnings. - Surprisingly, incorporating ecological considerations turned out to be not necessarily expensive. Some activities like re-using materials could even be done without any additional costs. The book describes how MFIs can maximise the benefits by considering the inherent connections between their missions and ecological considerations.

Anna Custers' study presents evidence from a randomised field experiment that was conducted in Bhopal, India. It delivers a two-fold contribution to the burgeoning field of financial literacy theory. Firstly, it investigates a specific link in the theoretical mechanism between financial literacy and household well-being. Where most financial literacy research focuses on the link between financial literacy training and demand for financial services, Custers deals with the question whether financial literacy training affects financial literacy levels. The results of her experiment show that a financial literacy training programme for urban microfinance clients positively affects average financial literacy levels. Secondly, Custers' study investigates a relatively under-researched topic, in particular for developing countries: The effect of trainer gender on learning outcomes and learning perceptions. She asks whether a differential design of a financial literacy training programme, based on trainer gender, differently affects financial literacy levels and learning perceptions among microfinance clients. The results of the experiment suggest it does not matter whether male or female trainers are employed. The results of her study provide an essential contribution to identifying the best strategies for improving the financial literacy of the poor. Custers' conclusion that specifically tailored instruction programmes, irrespective of trainer gender, can greatly improve financial literacy levels is highly relevant to both academia and professionals working in the field of financial literacy.

Nicole Tode evaluates the possible institutional development of Moroccan microcredit associations which intend to transform themselves from the status of non-governmental institutions (NGOs) into regulated microfinance banks. Such a transformation might increase their asset base, number of clients, average loan balance, and outreach, thus having a positive impact on microcredits in Morocco. The study, for which a comprehensive number of data sets from the microfinance information exchange (MIX) database was meticulously analyzed, addresses everybody dealing with or interested in the challenging situation NGO microfinance institutions find themselves in when planning to become commercial banks.