Microfinance’s New Horizons: Creating Value, Enabling Livelihoods

Microfinance — providing small loans to the world’s poorest people to spur entrepreneurship and innovation — has very quickly emerged as a successful bottom up intervention that has demonstrated that the poor can be served viably.

Microfinance used to be known as a basic banking model for villages in the developing world, a universe away from the fast moving capital markets, private equity funds and giant banking and insurance groups that make up the dynamic modern financial sector. But the two worlds are now starting to converge.

This new report takes a look at the growing interest in microfinance from both sides of the equation and confirms that the field is growing at an unprecedented rate. It also gives examples of innovations in products, processes and market mechanisms that are giving poor communities increased access to financial services.