centerforfinancialinclusionblog.wordpress — > Posted by Hema Bansal
Hema Bansal is the India Manager of The Smart Campaign.
Last week I attended a roundtable on “Toward Transparent Reporting for Responsible and Inclusive Finance” organized by the International Finance Corporation in New Delhi.
The participants offered many insights into transparent and responsible pricing, one of The Smart Campaign’s key...
centerforfinancialinclusionblog.wordpress — > Posted by Anita Gardeva
Word of the Week — Banking Outlet: A physical place where clients can access a financial service.
The following can all be considered banking outlets: a bank branch, an ATM, a banking agent (such as a gas station or post office that provides financial services), a retail...
financetrends.blogspot — Well I'm a bit skeptical that any modern news outlet will accurately pinpoint the true value of gold, but let's give the Financial Times points for trying in this latest piece (hat tip: James Rickards):"The Baird & Co warehouse sits in a dreary business park, half a mile east...
microcapital — Daniel Rozas, a microfinance consultant based in Brussels, and Vinod Kothari, a microfinance practitioner based in Kolkata, India, recently wrote an article published on the Microfinance Focus website [1] describing the risks and proposing solutions to the risks behind microfinance securitization, a process that involves aggregating assets in a pool...
microfinancefocus — Microfinance Focus Aug 31, 2010: The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has issued the final version of its paper entitled Microfinance activities and the Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision that contains supervisory guidance for the application of the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCP) to microfinance activities,...
financetrends.blogspot — Last Friday, StockTwits announced they would partner with SecondMarket, an independent marketplace for private company stock and illiquid assets, to provide an expanded new commentary stream for discussion on private companies.Some thoughts from Howard Lindzon on the new partnership:"I love stocks and I LOVE investing in startups. About 8...
financetrends.blogspot — Nassim Taleb, author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, joins Russ Roberts at EconTalk for a discussion on Black Swans, Fragility, and Mistakes.You'll find an audio podcast of the interview, along with a transcript and some related articles & links, at the link above.Be sure to check out...
microcapital — In a recent editorial published in CFOZone, Denise Bedell-Bleeker, a financial writer and author of Effective Exit Strategies for the Insurance Industry, posited that recent developments in the industry indicate that microfinance is turning into an asset class of its own. She cites BlueOrchard [1], a Switzerland-based commercial microfinance intermediary,...
microcapital — The Ibdaa Bank was recently launched in Syria with the support of the Arab Gulf Program for United Nations Development (AGFUND), an initiative for alleviating poverty and unemployment. The Ibdaa bank is intended to improve the economic and social conditions of the low-income population by supporting micro- and small businesses.
Ibdaa...
blogs.cgdev — By David Roodman - Milford Bateman’s new book, Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work? The Destructive Rise of Local Neoliberalism, annoys me in much the way that Dambisa Moyo’s did last year. I see myself as open-minded, but I guess I am allergic to (as I perceive it) sloppy thinking. The book...
psdblog.worldbank — The image below belongs to Filippo Minelli's Contradictions series. The World Bank has at least 11 Twitter feeds (and probably many more that I am not aware of). Also check out his Flags series. Can you guess which country gets to raise the 'Bananas' flag?
centerforfinancialinclusionblog.wordpress — > Posted by Stephanie Dolan
"All my successes have been built on my failures." ~ Benjamin Disraeli
“There have been no failures in microfinance.” I was struck by this statement when I heard it two years ago at an industry conference. Having recently moved from an investment bank (where part of my...
centerforfinancialinclusionblog.wordpress — > Posted by Anita Gardeva
Microfinance shouldn't burden its clients
Word of the Week – Avoidance of Over-indebtedness:
A Client Protection Principle that states that providers will take reasonable steps to ensure that credit will be extended only if borrowers have an adequate ability to repay and loans will not put the borrowers...
financetrends.blogspot — Nice inspirational article from IBD on Pete Sampras' quest to find his winning edge:"In a career defined by victories, Pete Sampras learned his most valuable lesson in defeat. At 19 years and 28 days, Sampras made a global splash by becoming the youngest men's champion of the U.S. Open in...
seattlemicrofinance — Thirty years ago, Mohammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi Banker, U.S. educated Professor, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient responded to the plight of the severely poor. He loaned only $27 to forty-two people, taking them out of a predatory life-long loan shark cycle and provided them the opportunity to work themselves...
kivanews.blogspot — "Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light." -Norman B. Rice
financetrends.blogspot — Financial Times sits down to lunch with Adam Fergusson, author of the newly revived classic, When Money Dies, a social history of the Weimar hyperinflation.Fergusson's 1975 book has recently been republished to sate demand from a new generation of investors eager to learn the lessons of Germany's inflationary catastrophe. In...
blogs.cgdev — By David Roodman - Last month I blogged an interesting article by Daniel Rozas and Vinod Kothari in Microfinance Focus about the potentially illusory quality of securitized microloans. If you don’t know what I mean by that, read my (short) earlier post. Microfinance portfolios, as I put it, are sand...
microfinancefocus — Microfinance Focus, Aug 23, 2010: Global Microfinance Summit which brings together microcredit practitioners, advocates, donor agencies, international financial institutions and others involved with microcredit to promote best practices will be held in Spain from November 14-17, 2011 in Valladolid, Spain.
The Summit’s goal is to ensure that 175 million of the...
microfinancefocus — By Priyanka Jayashankar,
[Women Leaders in Microfinance Sector – Series -1]
Grassroot leadership in a maturing microfinance sector:Interview with Dr Kalpana Sankar, CEO of Hand in Hand
Microfinance Focus , August 23, 2010 : Understanding the nuances of finance comes naturally to the nuclear-physics-scholar-turned-CEO. “You have to be strong in number-crunching while...
microcapital — The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a US-based multilateral finance institution serving Latin America and the Caribbean, will be providing a partial credit guarantee of up to USD 5 million to Agrofinanzas, a Mexican microfinance institution focused on supply chain financing, to support small Mexican sunflower producers. The guarantee program is...
centerforfinancialinclusionblog.wordpress — > Posted by Anita Gardeva and Sergio Guzmán
Interest rates in Latin American need not stay as high as they are today. This is the basic argument that Anita Campion, Rashmi Kiran Ekka and Mark Wenner present in their recent publication “Interest Rates and Implications for Microfinance in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Their study...
mykro — Oikocredit Northwest is an all-volunteer Seattle-based non-profit Support Association of Oikocredit, a global leader in the microcredit sector. Using funds provided by Oikocredit USA, Oikocredit Northwest is creating a part-time position (10-15 hrs./week) with growth potential. This Outreach Coordinator will support and expand activities undertaken by a two year old...
financetrends.blogspot — Jeff Watson at Master of the Universe's blog recently posted a Mises Institute video discussion of Henry Hazlitt's classic text, Economics In One Lesson.You can read Hazlitt's wonderful primer on economics for free online (PDF download also available) at FEE.org.Here's what the Mises Institute has to say about Hazlitt's widely...
centerforfinancialinclusionblog.wordpress — > Posted by Julian Sosa and Sergio Guzmán
Incentives are among the most controversial of issues in finance. They raise provocative questions: Why they are necessary? Who receives them? How should they be given? Various stakeholders are active in the debate, from Wall Street to microfinance. There are numerous arguments for...
