Microfinance Solvency and COVID-19: A Call for Coordination

Is a solvency crisis looming for the microfinance sector – particularly for small and medium-sized providers of microfinance? If so, where will it most likely take hold, and what will happen to the customers now being served?  What can be done by stakeholders in the microfinance sector to cushion the impact of failures within segments of the microfinance sector? If resulting consolidations take place within microfinance markets, what shape should they take to avoid adversely impacting their current customers? What lessons can be learned from ongoing workout negotiations between troubled microfinance institutions and their investors?  What inter-creditor challenges are arising as negotiations move beyond “handshakes"? How can digitization improve the resiliency of individual microfinance institutions and the sector at large? 

This webinar builds on a conversation that has been happening since September when CGAP published the COVID-19 briefing paper Microfinance Solvency and COVID-19: A Call for Coordination. Following this paper’s publication, members of the microfinance community authored a blog series.  In this webinar, authors of those blogs talked with each other, other stakeholders, and webinar participants about what they are seeing in the microfinance sector and what might be done to ensure insolvency challenges do not interrupt the delivery of financial services to poor communities still reeling from the effects of the pandemic.  

Related Resources 

Webinar presentation: Credit and solvency risk of Financial Service Providers in Financial Inclusion >>

Webinar presentation - Overview >>

CGAP COVID-19 Briefing Paper - Microfinance Solvency and COVID-19: A Call for Coordination >>

Microfinance Community: Blog Series- Microfinance Solvency and COVID-19 >>

Speakers

	Deborah Drake | VP, CFI Deborah Drake is VP, Investor Engagement and Research at the Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI). She also directs the Financial Inclusion Equity Council (FIEC).
	Mary Rose Brusewitz | Impact Investing Legal Working Group Mary Rose Brusewitz is member-in-charge of the New York office of Clark Hill PLC and a founding member of the Impact Investing Legal Working Group.
	Andrée Simon | President and CEO, FIF Andrée Simon is the president and CEO of FINCA Impact Finance (FIF), a global network of 19 microfinance banks and institutions.
	Nina Fenton | Senior Economist, European Investment Bank Nina Fenton is the lead economist on EIB’s Finance in Africa report. She holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford and has extensive experience in international development finance.
	Gcinisizwe “Sizwe” Mdluli | Operations Officer, CGAP Sizwe Mdluli works on the modernization of government-to-person (G2P) payments and CGAP’s agenda on micro and small enterprise (MSE) financing.
	Lucia Spaggiari | Innovation Director, MFR Lucia Spaggiari is Innovation Director at MFR, where she is in charge of the new business lines, partnerships and delivery channels.