Microfinance for Wealthy Countries
In April 2011, Fair Finance, a microcredit business that provides loans to some of the United Kingdom’s poorest households, received $3.66 million from mainstream banks, paving the road for the growth of microfinance in the developed world.
In the early 2000s, a few pioneers started to experiment with the microfinance model in Western Europe. Faisel Rahman, fresh from managing a $120 million World Bank microfinance program in Bangladesh, was one such social entrepreneur. He had worked with 200 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Bangladesh, creating the first microenterprise fund to grow businesses in rural areas. The experience opened his eyes to the similarities between financial exclusion in the developed and developing worlds....
Want more? Sorry, the full text of this article is only available to subscribers. Subscribe now.
Already a subscriber? Please log in by entering your email address and password into the red login box at the top-right corner of this page.
Need to register for your premium online access, which is included with your paid subscription? Register here.
One of 16 special essays on how the field of social innovation has evolved and what challenges remain ahead.
Investing to stop disasters before they start can save lives and money.
Who is the target population for a microcredit intervention? Your answer will depend largely on where you sit: Academics and microfinance institutions will be interested in different groups of people.
Kenya is about to become a world leader in mobile microfinance.
Microfinance has tended to grow by faithful replication of well-established models; it is now time to experiment with hybrid models that bring together the best features of each.
Advances in reducing poverty, environmental protection, and other global issues threaten the status quo—a report from Rio+20.
In this audio interview, Sheela Sethuraman speaks with one of branchless banking's greatest proponents and the co-founder of Eko India Financial Services, Abhishek Sinha.
