Tag: Microfinance

I started the year by blogging about microfinance, discussing the institution’s woes after coming across an article in the New York Times that did the same. A few days later, I snarkily posted about the good news being that microfinance research was not as bad as medical research.

I am not an expert on microfinance. The last time I conducted any kind of research on the topic was for my Masters thesis at the Université de Montréal, which I hope no one ever reads given how embarrassingly bad it was. My knowledge of the institution comes from reading working papers and journal articles on the topic, a module on which I teach each fall in my development seminar.

Consequently, a friend of my wife’s and mine who has been working in the microfinance industry for a while now took me to task and wrote a lengthy reply on Facebook to my initial posts. Given how insightful his detailed response was, I asked him if I could blog it, and he agreed under the condition that he remained anonymous. The five most important points he made in his response follow.

1. The Opposition is Politically Driven
2. The Evaluation Timeframe Matters,
3. The Poor Deserve Financial Services
4. Governments Need to Regulate the Industry
5. Microfinance is Here to Stay

These five posts represent my very modest contribution — with the help of a friend — to the policy discussion surrounding microfinance. If you have an interest in the topic, I strongly encourage you to follow senior Center for Global Development senior fellow David Roodman’s blog, in which he shares his insights while writing a book on the impacts of microfinance. I have a feeling his book will be required reading in my development seminar when it comes out.

Given the popularity of my initial posts on microfinance (see here and here), I continue blogging about the topic this week.

This week, however, I am blogging about microfinance as seen from within the industry. As such, I am blogging the five-point response a friend of my wife’s and mine — whom I refer to by the pseudonym “Chad” — has made to my previous two posts.

Chad works for a microfinance private equity firm and used to work for a leading online microfinance website. More importantly, Chad has traveled extensively to the field to meet with stakeholders along the microfinance supply chain. See here, here, here, and here for his first four points.

Chad’s fifth and last point was:

Given the popularity of my initial posts on microfinance (see here, and here), I continue blogging about the topic this week.

This week, however, I am blogging about microfinance as seen from within the industry. As such, I am blogging the five-point response a friend of my wife’s and mine — whom I refer to by the pseudonym “Chad” — has made to my previous two posts.

Chad works for a microfinance private equity firm and used to work for a leading online microfinance website. More importantly, Chad has traveled extensively to the field to meet with stakeholders along the microfinance supply chain. See here, here, and here for his first three points.

Chad’s fourth point was: