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The Appraisal Format consists of detailed instructions and Excel spreadsheets to guide an experienced microfinance analyst through a qualitative, institutional evaluation of a relatively mature MFI. The Appraisal Format evaluation process covers the core components of a final evaluation report. The executive summary has quantitative and qualitative reviews of key -conclusions and recommendations. Individual sections are devoted to institutional factors, MFI services/clientele/market, strategic objectives, and financial performance, respectively. The handbook1s annex provides additional information on how to calculate theoretical interest yields.
This Focus Note summarizes the findings from Country-Level Savings Assessments in Benin, Bosnia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Uganda, which suggest five strategies for improving poor people's access to savings services.
Does microfinance reach the poorest?
Some MFIs are finding ways to team up with existing safety net programs in hopes of making themselves at least indirectly useful to the poorest. Some safety net and grant programs are deliberately providing financial training and information to their clients so that their clients can subsequently link with MFIs. In other words, people who benefit from safety net programs may "graduate" to become full-fledged microfinance clients. This Focus Note discusses two basic models of linkages between MFIs and safety net programs.
Renewed emphasis on poverty reduction has put rural populations, particularly agricultural households, back in the spotlight of development efforts. Agricultural development programs often include credits for agricultural production, which have renewed the debate about how to provide finance in rural areas. This paper offers a model (agricultural microfinance), for providing financial services to poor, rural farming households, which combines the most relevant and promising features of traditional microfinance, traditional agricultural finance, and other approaches.
These cases (prepared for the international conference in Shanghai, May 2004) represent powerful examples of scaling up microfinance. These diverse institutions made conscious decisions to pursue scale while serving poor clienteles, demonstrating creativity and a willingness to take risk, while operating under commercial business principles.
The Poverty Assessment Tool (PAT) was developed for CGAP by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The multi-dimensional Poverty Index constructed by the tool is targeted at donors and investors who require a standardized, globally applicable set of poverty indicators to make poverty-focused funding decisions and to compare MFIs across regions and countries. Although it is more complex and costly than the simpler client-targeting tools used by MFIs (such as means testing, the Housing Index, Participatory Wealth Ranking, Rapid Appraisals, and Participatory Appraisals), and less comprehensive (and therefore less costly) than the World Bank's Household Expenditure Survey, the PAT nonetheless yields rigorous data that can also be used to rank large populations, determine the poorest inhabitants of large geographical regions, and make valid comparisons across regions and countries.
This first note was written by the Social Protection Anchor (based on studies of social funds that had incorporated microfinance), with significant review inputs by CGAP and FSE, and is a highly practical distillation of lessons learnt and recommendations for the use of microfinance in this type of multi-sectoral project.
This paper reviews the mounting body of evidence showing that the availability of financial services for poor households is a critical contextual factor with strong impact on the achievement of MDGs.
Microcredit is just one of many strategies that can alleviate poverty, generate income and promote employment. This brief outlines for donors when microcredit will be successful, when it is inappropriate and what alternative interventions can be used to strengthen the livelihoods of the poor.
The IGVGD program builds on a governmental food security intervention to provide financial services to the most destitute. This link between the government program and BRAC has facilitated the delivery of food grain assistance and savings and credit services to nearly a million women, over the last ten years.
Aimed primarily at donors and policymakers considering microcredit as a poverty alleviation response, funders are encouraged to select a package of tools that is likely to work best in a specific situation. The authors argue that effective poverty alleviation may require linkages among specialized institutions and multiple intervention programs.
This identifies the CGAP mission and its services to the microfinance industry as a whole.
This document describes ongoing CGAP thematic work on deepening the poverty outreach of MFIs.
Thirteen MFIs in seven countries examine the trade-offs they made between sustainability and poverty outreach. It is a summary of David Hulme and Paul Mosley, Finance against Poverty (London: Routledge, 1996).
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