Conventional microfinance has concentrated on providing microenterprise credit to micro-entrepreneurs, rather than meeting the diverse financial needs of a much wider range of client groups. Very poor and vulnerable people as a result have remained excluded from financial services. CGAP, as part of its vision to extend the financial frontier to include the vast majority of unserved people, has deliberately focused on poverty—specifically to increase the depth of outreach and to insure impact on the lives of the poor.

CGAP has consistently pushed the microfinance industry to have a greater focus on poverty, by:

• Developing tools to assess the poverty levels of clients
• Providing information on targeting tools
• Advocating for greater transparency on depth of outreach
• Encouraging pro-poor innovations
• Funding MFIs that demonstrate a commitment to poverty outreach
• Highlighting the impact of microfinance

Poverty Assessment Tool (PAT) uses statistically rigorous analysis to measure the poverty levels of microfinance clients. Developed as a tool for donors to use in making investment decisions, it has been tested in ten countries and will be published in Fall 2003.

Poverty Audit helps determine the extent to which an MFI program is committed to an institutional vision and practice of catering to the needs of very poor and vulnerable groups.

Client Targeting Resource Center provides techniques for explicitly targeting very poor clients, including the CASHPOR housing index, SEF's participatory wealth ranking, means testing, and geographic targeting.

Impact Assessment Resource Center is a research project designed to improve the quality of microfinance services and their impact on poverty by developing systems to measure the impact microfinance services have on clients' lives.

Rural Pro-Poor Innovation Challenge gives awards to microfinance organizations that have developed innovative methodologies to deepen rural poverty outreach and impact.