Microfinance Podcast

Credit unions play a pivotal role in providing access to financial services to the base of the pyramid. The credit union movement is based on savings mobilization as the foundation of microfinance. In this series, we look at lessons from one of the most successful credit union systems of the world, namely the credit unions of the Central American country of Guatemala. Managers, staff and clients of UPA tell us what is so special about their cooperative.

Credit unions play a pivotal role in providing access to financial services to the base of the pyramid. The credit union movement is based on savings mobilization as the foundation of microfinance. In this series, we look at lessons from one of the most successful credit union systems of the world, namely the credit unions of the Central American country of Guatemala. Managers, staff and clients of UPA tell us what is so special about their cooperative.

Credit unions play a pivotal role in providing access to financial services to the base of the pyramid. The credit union movement is based on savings mobilization as the foundation of microfinance. In this series, we look at lessons from one of the most successful credit union systems of the world, namely the credit unions of the Central American country of Guatemala. Managers, staff and clients of UPA tell us what is so special about their cooperative.

Resumiendo los resultados del estudio el Sr. Silva da recomendaciones que podrían ser útiles para los operadores de las IFM así como también para los de los inversionistas y financiadores. Alex hace énfasis en la importancia de reconocer a las microfinanzas como una especialidad dentro de la intermediación financiera en general así como la importancia de que las IMFs cuenten con los sistemas apropiados de gestión de riesgos y un buen gobierno corporativo.

Summarizing the details of a study of MFI failures, Alex Silva gives important recommendations for MFI sponsors, managers, and funders: Recognize microfinance as financial intermediation, focus on risk management systems, and create good corporate governance. 

Sin duda, los profesionales en microfinanzas de todo el mundo se beneficiarán de este estudio seminal sobre las IMFs de América Latina y de las correspondientes lecciones aprendidas

Alex Silva provides more details of the major reasons for the failure of microfinance institutions – an important topic that - so far- has not been talked about. Without doubt, practitioners from around the world stand to benefit from this seminal study of Latin American MFIs.

¿Qué podemos aprender de los fracasos en las microfinanzas?Las historias de éxito de las instituciones de microfinanzas (IMFs) han sido ampliamente estudiados. Ello, a fin de ayudar en la comprensión de las razones que las llevaron a alcanzar dicho éxito y determinar, para el beneficio del resto de la industria, las “buenas prácticas”. Sin embargo, las instituciones que podrían ser considerados como experiencias fallidas han recibido hasta la fecha muy poca atención.En al conversación con Alex Silva, un pionero de las microfinanzas, se exponen los resultados de un estudio reciente sobre las instituciones de microfinanzas que han fracasado. Alex Silva, lista seis razones principales para la caída de las IMF y proporciona detalles de cada una de los casos de experiencias fallidas que forman parte del estudio en cuestión. expandiendo la frontera del conocimiento práctico en microfinanzas.

What can we learn from failures in microfinance? Successful microfinance institutions (MFIs) have been widely studied to understand the reasons that drove them into the market and to extract good practices that are useful for the rest of the industry. However, the institutions that could be considered failed experiences have received very little attention. Alex Silva, a microfinance pioneer, outlines the results of a recent study on failed microfinance institutions. He outlines six major reasons for the downfall of MFIs.

How does a crisis help microfinance institutions and their clients? Pancho Otero, one of the global industry pioneers, explains how this is the case. And he gives his perspective on the importance of the enabling environment and good regulations to help produce mature microfinance institutions.

Why is successful microfinance based on savings? The microfinance industry has produced a fair share of pioneers and visionaries, and Pancho Otero is one of them! As the founding CEO of the Prodem Foundation, the nucleus of BancoSol, Pancho helped create one of the most successful microfinance institutions in the world. Pancho gives his insights on the success of microfinance in Bolivia and how Prodem became a bank and a leader in savings mobilization.

How did BancoSol become a global leader in deposit mobilization? Kurt Koenigsfest, CEO of BancoSol, describes four key success factors that are critically important for any MFI that wants to engage in savings mobilization. He talks about BancoSol’s experience with introducing a savings-based organizational culture and how appropriate incentives are helping staff to focus on savings.

In the third episode on BancoSol, Latin America’s and the world’s first bank fully dedicated to microfinance, we meet the CEO. Kurt Koenigsfest talks about the unique positioning of the bank, and how it evolved throughout its history to become a role model for the industry. We hear about the challenges of transformation and how BancoSol became a leader in deposit mobilization. Management puts a relentless focus on the design of new and adequate products for BancoSol’s customers.

We continue our coverage of BancoSol, Latin America’s first microfinance bank. In this episode, Jaime Zegarra talks about the bank’s strategic focus: loan portfolio growth, portfolio quality, and expanding BancoSol’s client base.

BancoSol is a true microfinance pioneer. As Latin America’s first commercial microfinance bank it has been much copied but never surpassed. We begin our coverage of BancoSol by focusing on its operations in El Alto, a sprawling city on the “Altiplano” above La Paz, one of the highest cities in the world. Jaime Zegarra, regional manager of BancoSol, talks about the ways in which the bank forms part of the community and connects with its clients.

The ProCredit Group is one of the global microfinance leaders. With operations on three continents, the group is the largest international network player in terms of assets. The Bolivian branch was one of the pioneers of the network. ; Roberto Zegada, Regional Manager El Alto, Banco Los Andes ProCredit talks about the growth of operations and the competitive situation in one of the world's best-served microfinance markets.

The ProCredit Group is one of the global microfinance leaders. With operations on three continents, the group is the largest international network player in terms of assets. The Bolivian branch was one of the pioneers of the network.  Roberto Zegada, Regional Manager El Alto, Banco Los Andes ProCredit talks about the growth of operations and the competitive situation in one of the world’s best-served microfinance markets.

Peru is one of the most dynamic microfinance markets in the world. In a very competitive market, Financiera CREAR has been a rising star. Marcos Corrales, manager of CREAR's Lima regional branch, talks about the success factors that contributed to the strong growth and performance of their lending activities.

Peru is one of the most dynamic microfinance markets in the world. In a very competitive market, Financiera CREAR has been a rising star. Marcos Corrales, manager of CREAR's Lima regional branch, talks about the success factors that contributed to the strong growth and performance of their lending activities.

Michael McCaffrey, Financial Inclusion Technical Specialist, Pacific Financial Inclusion Program (PFIP), talks about the design of a suite of products such as remittances, savings, and microinsurance. He explains how different programs and operators attempt to reach scale and sustainability. Through participation in international training programs such as the Boulder MFT, microfinance practitioners and policy makers from the Pacific Islands get access to the latest developments and share their own unique experience.

Michael McCaffrey, Financial Inclusion Technical Specialist, Pacific Financial Inclusion Program (PFIP), talks about the specific challenges of improving financial inclusion in remote island states. He shares the PFIP experience with mobile banking and explains how commercial banks can help improve the financial infrastructure.

Bob Christen, Director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. talks about the strategic focus on savings. The successful mobilization of small-scale savings requires dramatic reductions of transaction costs. Mobile banking and electronic payment platforms play a central role in this process. The foundation also fosters the development of additional products such as microinsurance.

Evelyn Stark, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation talks about the importance of marketing in successful mobile-money deployments.

Microfinance Podcast wishes you success in all your micro, small and large projects in 2011!

Clara Veniard, Associate Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, talks about a bank-led agent model where the customer proposition and the channel are controlled by the bank. 

Clara Veniard, Associate Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, talks about a bank-led agent model where the customer proposition and the channel are controlled by the bank. 

Ignacio Mas, Deputy Director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, talks about stores acting as cash merchants and their basic need to periodically rebalance their cash and e-money holdings. He explains the basic options for doing so, including going to a bank branch.

Daniel Radcliffe, Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, describes how retail payment systems can reach a critical mass of customers.

Daniel Radcliffe, Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, talks about the fundamental factors that affect the growth and success if retail payment systems.

Amolo Ng’weno talks about M-PESA which is reaching over 12 million people at 19 million outlets. This provides amazing transaction rails for other services.

Tamara Cook talks about one of the partners of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Opportunity International Bank of Malawi, as an example of how banks have moved beyond branches to try to solve the problems that they faced of reducing costs and reaching people where they lived.

“Today we have a historic opportunity to use mobile phones to solve two major problems that bankers faced for generations: how do you get the cost of serving clients down, and how do you reach people who leave far from the branch.” Tamara Cook, Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Increasing competition amongst financial institutions in Bangladesh has given clients many options to choose from. But competition has brought with itself distortions in delivery systems, stress, and over indebtedness among clients. Preparing for managing delinquency has thus been the priority for many service providers.Stuart Rutherford is the founder of SafeSave, a microfinance institution in Bangladesh and author of the books The Poor And Their Money and Portfolios Of The Poor. Rutherford talks about the competition in Bangladesh, delinquency management, and key challenges in addressing it.

Listening to clients is at the heart of providing financial services in a market-led approach. Financial service providers should always keep their eyes and ears open for what their clients are saying in terms of the design and delivery of the product. Stuart Rutherford is the founder of SafeSave, a microfinance institution in Bangladesh and author of the books The Poor And Their Money and Portfolios Of The Poor. Rutherford talks about the importance of listening to clients, how best MFIs can learn from them, and his experience in conducting such research.

Roger Voorhies, Founder and Former CEO, OIBM talks about the bank’s institution building, the bank’s experience with technology - cards, m-banking, ATMs, and whether the OIBM experience can be replicated in other regions.

Roger Voorhies talks about the biggest challenges and natural advantages of doing microfinance in Africa. He also introduces the history of OIBM, one of the leading microfinance banks on the continent. 

Mark Schreiner, Director, Microfinance Risk Management talks about the future of poverty scoring and gives examples of how MFIs use this powerful tool.       

Mark Schreiner, Director, Microfinance Risk Management explains where a score card comes from, what are the challenges of implementing the system, and how one trains analysts.

Mark Schreiner, Director, Microfinance Risk Management talks about the poverty scoring as a way for microlenders to measure how poor their clients are in a quantitative way and why funders could be interested in poverty scoring.

Michael McCord, President, MicroInsurance Centre, LLC  talks about the factors that push the growth of microinsurance, the evolution of products and the biggest challenge in microinsurance.

Michael McCord, President, MicroInsurance Centre, LLC  talks about the best potential delivery channels for michroinsurance. Since its inception as an initiative of MicroSave, The MicroInsurance Centre, LLC has worked on several levels to promote responsible microinsurance. The MicroInsurance Centre is the only independent institution that is entirely focused on actively promoting the partnership model of microinsurance. In this model, appropriate institutions are linked with regulated insurance companies to provide professional insurance products to the low-income market. This method has proven to provide important risk management tools to low-income people, provide an addition to the product lines of intermediary institutions, and allow insurers to enter this market efficiently and profitably.

Michael McCord, President, MicroInsurance Centre, LLC gives a definition of microinsurance and talks about the mechanisms of implementing microinsurance successfully. Since its inception as an initiative of MicroSave, The MicroInsurance Centre, LLC has worked on several levels to promote responsible microinsurance. The MicroInsurance Centre is the only independent institution that is entirely focused on actively promoting the partnership model of microinsurance. In this model, appropriate institutions are linked with regulated insurance companies to provide professional insurance products to the low-income market. This method has proven to provide important risk management tools to low-income people, provide an addition to the product lines of intermediary institutions, and allow insurers to enter this market efficiently and profitably.

Daryl Collins, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" and Senior Associate, Bankable Frontier Associates talks about implementing lessons from Portfolios of the Poor in South Africa. Daryl's principal area of research is estimating the impact of microfinance programs on the financial management of poor households. From 2003 to 2006, she was the principal investigator for a longitudinal study called the Financial Diaries project funded by the Ford Foundation and DFID in South Africa. This study became the basis of a book, Portfolios of the Poor.

Daryl Collins, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" and Senior Associate at Bankable Frontier Associates talks about implementing lessons from Portfolios of the Poor in South Africa. Daryl's principal area of research is estimating the impact of microfinance programs on the financial management of poor households. From 2003 to 2006, she was the principal investigator for a longitudinal study called the Financial Diaries project funded by the Ford Foundation and DFID in South Africa. This study became the basis of a book, Portfolios of the Poor.

Sukhwinder Singh Arora, co-author of two books ‘Small Customer, Big Market: Commercial Banks in Microfinance’ (with Malcolm Harper) and ‘The Poor and their Money’ (with Stuart Rutherford) talks about how the lessons from Portfolios of the Poor help providers design better products.Over the past 25 years, Sukhwinder Arora has worked for a range of development organisations at micro, meso and macro level. Sukhwinder’s core work has been on policies and programmes designed to enable poor people to participate in and benefit from financial and other markets.

Richard Rosenberg, consultant to CGAP, talks about the value proposition of microfinance and how this relates to the price for financial services. Richard has been with CGAP since its founding in 1995. He has written or contributed to numerous CGAP publications. His current areas of focus include interest rate issues, over-indebtedness, and regulation of microfinance. He is a core faculty member of the Microfinance Training Program at The Boulder Institute.

Richard Rosenberg, consultant to CGAP, talks about the value proposition of microfinance and how this relates to the price for financial services.Richard has been with CGAP since its founding in 1995. He has written or contributed to numerous CGAP publications. His current areas of focus include interest rate issues, over-indebtedness, and regulation of microfinance. He is a core faculty member of the Microfinance Training Program at The Boulder Institute. MicroSave and the Financial Access Initiative invite you to join the authors of Portfolios of the Poor for a two-day virtual conference. This event will be moderated by co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham Wright. Dates: June 8-9, 2010 For more information and free registration, please visit www.MicroSave.org

Richard Rosenberg, consultant to CGAP, highlights the biggest findings of “Portfolios of the Poor”. Richard has been with CGAP since its founding in 1995. He has written or contributed to numerous CGAP publications. His current areas of focus include interest rate issues, over-indebtedness, and regulation of microfinance. He is a core faculty member of the Microfinance Training Program at The Boulder Institute. MicroSave and the Financial Access Initiative invite you to join the authors of Portfolios of the Poor for a two-day virtual conference. This event will be moderated by co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham Wright. Dates: June 8-9, 2010 For more information and free registration, please visit www.MicroSave.org

Yaw Nyarko, Professor of Economics at New York University and Director of NYU Africa House, talks about the particulars of the research for Portfolios of the Poor and how it will influence the development of new research trends. Yaw Nyarko is a theoretical economist whose current work focuses on two main areas: (1) models where the economic actors engage in active learning about their environments and (2) human capital models of economic growth and development. MicroSave and the Financial Access Initiative invite you to join the authors of Portfolios of the Poor for a two-day virtual conference. This event will be moderated by co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham Wright. Dates: June 8-9, 2010 For more information and free registration, please visit www.MicroSave.org

Jonathan Morduch, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" shares his opinion on what the book tells us about reimagining microfinance. Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative, a consortium of researchers focused on financial inclusion.

Jonathan Morduch, co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor" shares his opinion on what the book tells us about reimagining microfinance. Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative, a consortium of researchers focused on financial inclusion. Morduch has taught on the Economics faculty at Harvard University, and has held visiting positions at Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Tokyo. He has worked with the United Nations and World Bank, and advises global NGOs. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and on the board of the Journal of Globalization and Development. MicroSave and the Financial Access Initiative invite you to join the authors of Portfolios of the Poor for a two-day virtual conference. This event will be moderated by co-authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven, and MicroSave’s Graham Wright. Dates: June 8-9, 2010 For more information and free registration, please visit www.MicroSave.org