-
’The Price is Wrong’ (For Some Things) at the BoP
The Jameel Poverty Action Lab’s latest bulletin, "The Price Is Wrong," suggests charging small fees to balance access can dramatically reduce uptake, while raising little revenue. While this seems to contradict the entire development through enterprise agenda, a closer look suggests this view isn’t far from what we already know about BoP markets.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Charting the Future at Women’s World Banking
In the final post of a wide-ranging interview, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Women’s World Banking, discusses expansion at the organization to include multi-product servcies to individuals and explains why consolidation in would benefit the microfinance sector in the long term.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Mobilizing Savings Through Insurance
Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women’s World Banking, discusses the challenges and opportunities of match-savings programs and micro-insurance, and the importance of understanding clients. In Jordan, WWB is piloting a health insurance program where insurance products are coupled with loans, resulting in strong customer relationships.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Can Microfinance Ignite a Good Governance Epidemic?
By serving as examples of effective corporate governance, microfinance providers could succeed where so many financial institutions have failed and in ’infect’ their client and community networks with the ’disease’ of strong corporate governance. With almost 3 billion unbanked people still to reach, those are huge potential networks to infect.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Going to See ’To Catch A Dollar’? Tell Us What You Think
Tonight - March 31 - and only tonight, the curtain will go up on the documentary, To Catch a Dollar, in movie theaters around the United States. The film documents the travels of Muhammad Yunus as the Nobel Laurate spreads the word on microfinance - not in Bangladesh, India or Asia - but here ... in America.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Transforming Deserts: The 2011 International Property Rights Index
The 2011 International Property Rights Index (IPRI) was released last week, bringing to mind a vital - yet overlooked - global development debate about the role of property rights in improving economic opportunities at the base of the pyramid. In fact, property rights alone are rarely enough to spur financial sectors into small business lending.
- Categories
- Agriculture
-
Egypt’s 800-Billion Pound Gorilla
With an estimated 800 billion Egyptian Pounds ($136 billion) in domestic deposits, you’d think Egyptian banks should have plenty of loans and credit available for Egyptian small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs). Not quite; considering the fact that Egyptian government debt held domestically is nearly the same amount.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Bananas Over Corporate Governance: The 2011 Banana Skins Survey
In the recently published Microfinance Banana Skins 2011, subtitled "Losing its fairy dust," the third annual survey polls microfinance practitioners, investors, analysts, regulators, and other experts on the top risks facing the industry worldwide. Corporate governance is ranked the fourth highest risk - up from seventh a year ago.
- Categories
- Uncategorized