Publication

This paper analyzes microfinance institutions (MFIs) as businesses, asking how some MFIs succeed in reducing and covering costs, earning returns, attracting capital and scaling up. Based on a survey of the existing literature and interviews with key microfinance players, the authors strive to uncover the major innovations in product design and management techniques that have allowed MFIs to offer financial products to a clientele that had been deemed too poor, risky and costly for banks to serve. The authors also survey contextual factors such as economic and political conditions that hinder or facilitate microfinance.