<p>Paul DiLeo has been engaged in development finance since the early 1990s, launching an investment fund in Russia, small business financing programs in Eastern Europe, a USAID program in the Caucasus, the Gray Ghost Microfinance Fund, and Grassroots Capital Management.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>


Managing Director, Grassroots Capital Management

Paul DiLeo

Garrett Jaso

Deborah Drake

The maturity of microfinance brings us to a unique inflection point. “The Future of Microfinance” coeditor Paul DiLeo analyzes the past and present, and shares his hopes for the sector. 

Blog Post

Microfinance began in its early days as a novel approach to economic development with a focus on making loans to low-income customers using social collateral. No longer niche, microfinance has reached millions of customers around the world and helped demonstrate that low-income people are, in fact, bankable. Fast forward to today, when microfinance is now but a subset of a diverse range of financial service providers targeting low-income customers.

How did we get here and what happens next for microfinance? CFI recently sat down with one of the editors of a new book that seeks to answer that question.

Paul DiLeo, Managing Director of Grassroots Capital Management and former faculty member of CFI’s <a href="https://centerforfinancialinclusion.org/board-leadership-for-impact-program-overview/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">governance training</a> programs in Africa, coedited “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/book/the-future-of-microfinance/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Future of Microfinance</a>,” with Ira Lieberman, Todd Watkins and Anna Kanze. The book was born out of a workshop at Lehigh University and includes contributions from more than twenty leading authorities in the field. Together, they tell the important story of how microfinance developed and how it has met the needs of hundreds of millions of people. They also set forth answering questions about how it can continue to meet those needs.
<h3>Why did you publish this book?</h3>
<strong>PD</strong>: The coeditors and I felt that, somewhat paradoxically, as microfinance has consolidated its position to be an integral component of national financial systems around the world, its visibility has diminished. Its success -- and setbacks -- hold important lessons for the broader financial inclusion and impact investing communities at a time when market-based solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges are receiving so much attention. The microfinance experience can be useful in helping these initiatives achieve timely success and avoid pitfalls. Also, while not a consideration when the bulk of the book was written, it also offers some guidance on the essential value we have to preserve as microfinance navigates the pandemic.
<h3>Looking back on microfinance’s history, what are some of the key milestones or accomplishments?</h3>
<strong>PD</strong>: In the early days, microfinance started to demonstrate that poor people didn’t pose an insurmountable credit risk; they were not unbankable and they were not uncreditworthy. From there, the industry moved to prove that the institutions serving microfinance clients can operate sustainably and that they aren’t preponderantly dependent on subsidized or concessional financing. Further, the funding going into the microfinance industry began to evolve to a broader range of financing – from grants and heavily subsidized capital, to purely commercial capital. From there, microfinance institutions (MFIs) began taking on more of the substance of financial institutions from a regulatory, supervisory, and governance standpoint.

What’s interesting is how microfinance has become less of a “headline topic.” In other words, microfinance is now part of the mainstream landscape just like every other sort of subcategory of financial institutions. Microfinance is no longer this idiosyncratic oddity that people can write “whoever imagined this” articles about.
<blockquote class="pullquote--right">Microfinance is no longer this idiosyncratic oddity that people can write “whoever imagined this” articles about.</blockquote>
However, there is a downside. Microfinance was never intended to become “mainstream.” It was always intended to be distinctive from everything else in conventional financial services.
<h3>I’m sure if I asked you in January, your answer would be much different, but how would you describe the chapter of microfinance we're in now?</h3>
<strong>PD</strong>: I think this chapter poses the question of whether microfinance can preserve its essential differentiation: does it retain its priority commitment and distinctive character to continue to serve poor people? Some institutions do it more efficiently, do it more profitably, achieve greater scale, so there's nothing distinctive about microfinance in those dimensions. What distinguishes microfinance is the priority to develop products and services along with the ability to find ways of reaching and innovating for their clients.

Microfinance derives a substantial proportion of its value through relationships that accrue to the client rather than being captured and maximized for the benefit of the financial intermediary. This isn’t a new concept, but the current situation resulting from COVID is going to put this topic in focus because inevitably you're going to see a lot of mergers. We’ll have to keep an eye on the character of the fewer institutions that survive.
<h3>On the topic of consolidation, the book mentions how, in competitive markets, like Peru or India, consolidation is much faster than in less saturated markets. Do you see COVID accelerating consolidation, and if so, in which markets?</h3>
<strong>PD</strong>: Consolidation in the microfinance industry has always been a challenge because in many markets there are many smaller institutions that do not see the benefit, or feel pressure to achieve economies of scale. I think what may be different now, as opposed to previous crises, is that decapitalization is going to be faster and more severe, and the impact is affecting all institutions to a significant degree at the same time.

The wild card is what the regulatory authorities will do because in many of the less competitive markets a lot of these institutions may not be subject to strict regulatory capital requirements, which allow institutions to operate with relatively low levels of capital, or even negative net worth, while they wait and see if a brighter day comes. If regulators do not move to force consolidation, you could see the typical resistance to consolidation and, as a result, a lot of these institutions will continue to fight for survival. Whether consolidation is forced by regulators or not, funders could force consolidation, since they are the ones providing life support. Hopefully, the industry will keep in mind the importance of preserving what is distinctive about microfinance, rather than just trying to create the most profitable and efficient institutions.
<h3>The book mentions how many players in the space “have gone on to other endeavors like financial inclusion, which is closely related to microfinance, but not quite the same thing.” Do you think there’s still enough interest and, more importantly, enough capital to reinvest in microfinance?</h3>
<strong>PD</strong>: Unfortunately, some of the legacy investors in microfinance have declared victory and moved on because, from their perspective, microfinance is well established and has relatively good access to capital markets based on a solid business model developed through experimentation and trial and error over many years.

In one sense, there's nothing wrong with these investors that ostensibly have a development objective moving on to support new models. However, in pursuing their mandates to address social and economic issues, they shouldn’t just move on to the next bright, shiny object in financial inclusion. They should continue to support and guide a proven model like microfinance as it scales to preserve social missions and achieve appreciable benefit to target populations.
<blockquote class="pullquote--left">Investors shouldn’t just move on to the next bright, shiny object in financial inclusion.</blockquote>
It’s a shame that many of these investors have essentially ceded responsibility for preserving what they played a large part in creating. Instead of saying “it’s not our role anymore,” those funders can recommit and play an outsized role in preserving the character and integrity of microfinance. Just because you have succeeded in developing and nurturing a business model like microfinance, doesn't mean your responsibilities are over.
<h3>From a governance perspective, what are some considerations microfinance investors and executives should keep in mind as the industry continues to grapple with COVID-19?</h3>
<strong>PD:</strong> It’s important to re-emphasize that leaders in management and boards need to look at both the financial stabilization of their institution and the implications for clients to determine their response.

For example, accelerating the shift to more digital channels may be an obvious response to COVID, but we need to ensure that we aren’t leaving certain client segments – rural, illiterate, older, women – behind.

We may feel pressure to quickly achieve pre-COVID levels of profitability, but this urge should be resisted if it means abandoning certain clients, products or research that are core to our social mission.
<h3>There’s a chapter written on the need to refocus on the client. Do you think the industry has moved away from focusing on customer centricity to something like product development?</h3>
<strong>PD:</strong> The book has a line that states most MFIs understand the poor, which helps them better serve the poor; however, we must make a distinction between the product and the client. There's a lot of outfits that understand the poor very well, like lotteries, gambling casinos, and payday lenders. They can devise products that extract as much value as possible from the poor. The issue here is not just understanding the poor: it’s about what institutions do with that knowledge, the objective of learning about their vulnerabilities, and what they need.

MFIs have a huge amount of knowledge about the poor. MFIs understand the economic systems in which they operate as well as how the communities work and the characteristics of their value chains. That said, we must ensure we retain those strengths because if we move towards a more transactional relationship, we lose our ability to create meaningful value for customers and, instead, prioritize maximizing value extraction.
<h3>Do you have any recommendations to ensure the upcoming consolidation period is both responsible and maintains the ethos of client centricity?</h3>
<strong>PD:</strong> In our current context, I think one of the strengths of microfinance as a mature, established sector is that it has a diverse funder and shareholder base. Hopefully, these investors will recognize the crucial and, in many cases, unique role that microfinance can play in helping poorer, informal clients and communities weather the crisis. But for this to happen, legacy investors – the DFIs, philanthropies, social investors – who may have been diluted to low levels need to step up. MFIs exist to create value for their clients in a sustainable way, and legacy investors need to speak up and ensure that this character defines the way that the industry moves forward from COVID.

What Is the Future of Microfinance? Q and A with Paul DiLeo

Strong board leadership can help reduce a financial service provider’s vulnerability to external shocks and enhance its resilience.

<img class=" wp-image-25789 alignleft" src="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/30784872334_b499dfc281_m.jpg" alt="30784872334_b499dfc281_m" width="88" height="109" /><em>The following is part of an Africa Board Fellowship </em><a href="/series/abf-spotlight/">blog series</a><em> spotlighting the experiences of participants and reflections from industry experts.</em>

In the previous blog in this series, we reframed external challenges as a “normal” part of doing business for financial service providers (FSPs) targeting the base of the pyramid. And based on insights from Africa Board Fellows, we looked at <a href="http://cfi-blog.org/2018/08/09/navigating-challenges-is-what-boards-are-all-about-part-1-anticipating-challenges/">specific ways board members can anticipate and even shape the challenging aspects of their operating environment</a>. However, while most boards have more potential for external influence than they often exercise, there are always external factors that cannot be controlled. Boards must also continually focus on reducing the FSP’s vulnerability and enhancing its resilience<img class=" wp-image-25794 aligncenter" src="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/31479737602_1ed7a2ba32_k.jpg" alt="31479737602_1ed7a2ba32_k" width="638" height="93" />
<h2>Reducing Vulnerability</h2>
Beyond external awareness and efforts to shape the operating environment, boards can direct their institutions to take internal steps to minimize exposure to external shocks and increase the FSP’s ability to withstand changes in the operating environment. These steps aim to secure adequate financial cushions and human resources to cope with shocks.
<ul>
 	<li><strong>Strategic Planning</strong>: As part of strategic planning<strong>, </strong>the board should review external factors, including client demand, current and future market penetration of its own institution and competitors, and market saturation by area. The strategic plan should include multiple scenarios (e.g., conservative, base case, and optimistic) as well as short, medium and long-term targets. The plan should be reviewed and revised on a regular basis.</li>
 	<li><strong>Capital Adequacy</strong>: Board members bear ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the institution’s capital and liquidity are adequate to surmount whatever disruptions can reasonably be anticipated, and – just as important – ensuring that management takes quick action to cut costs if capital starts eroding. Improvement in the economic environment is often just around the corner, but it can remain around the corner just long enough for the institution to become insolvent and fail. For regulated institutions, regulators set minimum capital adequacy and liquidity ratios, but this does not absolve directors from the responsibility to determine whether additional capital and liquidity would be prudent. Directors can work with management to evaluate how capital and liquidity will be affected in various scenarios.</li>
 	<li><strong>Asset–Liability Management</strong>: Like any financial institution, FSPs are exposed to balance sheet mismatches, such as currency mismatches when borrowing in dollars or euros. While avoiding hard currency loans may not always be feasible, CEOs and board members should scrutinize foreign currency exposure carefully and limit it to levels that the institution can absorb if currency devaluation does occur. To prepare for currency fluctuations, Vision Fund Zambia’s board instituted a policy against foreign currency denominated borrowing, as CEO Nkosilathi Moyo describes in <a href="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/07/nkosilathi-_moyo_visionfund_final.pdf">this interview</a>. Passing foreign exchange risk on to clients by denominating loans in foreign currency is usually not an effective risk management technique, as most clients are even less able to absorb such risk than the FSP lender.</li>
 	<li><strong>Staff Training and Incentives</strong>: As part of their fundamental responsibility for the viability of their institution, directors must closely scrutinize how management proposes to train and incentivize staff to ensure that they support strong operational procedures that appropriately retain and encourage staff. Staff knowledge and loyalty can be essential in a crisis situation.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Enhancing Resilience</h2>
[caption id="attachment_25799" align="alignright" width="226"]<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-25799" src="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/paul-dileo.jpg" alt="Paul DiLeo" width="226" height="250" /> Paul DiLeo[/caption]

Inevitably, with all the best efforts and preparation, some external events cannot be avoided. But this doesn’t mean they cannot be planned for, even if they may take very different forms. Boards can be better prepared to recover from shocks if they take the following steps:
<ul>
 	<li><strong>Board Composition and Training</strong>: Board self-evaluations should be performed on at least an annual basis to ensure the right skills are represented and to identify gaps. Any areas of improvement should be addressed by training, bringing in experts, and field visits to other institutions that have successfully dealt with relevant challenges and opportunities. Proactively taking these steps can help directors be more prepared for the unexpected.</li>
 	<li><strong>Executive Committee of the Board</strong>: The ability to act quickly can be crucial to responding successfully to external shocks. Many boards have directors in far-flung locations, and it may be hard to assemble a quorum. Even when formal decisions are not required, the CEO and senior management will benefit from the counsel and insights of board members. Many boards designate a small executive committee, usually drawn from in-country directors, authorized to take decisions and provide counsel to management between meetings of the full board.\</li>
 	<li><strong>Disaster Planning and Recovery</strong>: Board directors should ensure that contingency plans addressing a variety of common challenges are prepared and kept up to date. These will cover matters ranging from “phone trees” indicating who calls who to confirm staff safety and whereabouts in the event of a natural disaster or security threat, to secure offsite data backup and recovery to succession planning in the event of loss of a key manager. As Resi Janssen of FFSL South Sudan <a href="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/07/resi_janssen_fssl.pdf">notes</a>, the first priority in a serious crisis is to ensure that staff are safe.</li>
</ul>
FSPs operate in dynamic environments where challenges and opportunities are constantly changing. Board directors with a good understanding of the institution’s strengths and weaknesses and a grasp on the operating environment play a crucial role in helping shape the environment over the medium term, and ensuring that the FSP and its management are resilient and prepared.

<strong>CFI is currently recruiting fellows for the next cohort of the <a href="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/about/what-we-do/africa-board-fellowship-program/">Africa Board Fellowship Program</a>. If you or someone you know is a board member or executive at an Africa-based MFI or financial service provider, we recommend considering this opportunity.</strong>

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Navigating Challenges Is What Boards Are All About – Part 2: Vulnerability and Resilience

Strong FSP boards prepare for and respond to external shocks as a rule, not an exception.

<em><img class=" wp-image-25789 alignleft" src="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/30784872334_b499dfc281_m.jpg" alt="30784872334_b499dfc281_m" width="88" height="109" />The following is part of a <a href="https://cfi-blog.org/tag/abf-blog-series/">blog series</a> spotlighting the perspectives and experiences of CEOs and board members of financial institutions, as well as industry experts, who have participated in CFI’s <a href="https://www.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/programs-a-projects/abf">Africa Board Fellowship</a> program.</em>

Far from being “extraordinary and rare,” challenging environments are a “normal” part of business for financial service providers (FSPs) targeting low-income populations. We tend to think that external environment challenges are extraordinary events that cannot be predicted or are too varied and diverse to prepare for—and therefore are best confronted as they arise. What do currency devaluations, deteriorating security, political interference or regulatory upheavals have in common? Can we can plan for them all and prepare effective responses in advance? Do responses need to be tailored to each circumstance?

Through the <a href="https://www.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/programs-a-projects/abf">Africa Board Fellows program</a>, we have reviewed a wide sample of the external threats faced by the boards of FSPs in recent years in Africa and globally: economic fluctuations, currency devaluations, violence and instability, abruptly announced interest rate caps and capital requirements, natural disasters, terrorism—it’s a long and heterogeneous list.

<img class=" size-full wp-image-25776 aligncenter" src="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/31589334426_3111c44396_z.jpg" alt="31589334426_3111c44396_z" width="640" height="377" />

Despite this diversity, an engaged FSP – led by an active board – can often do quite a bit to shape and influence the operating environment or ready the institution to survive shocks. Preparing for and responding to crises, threats and opportunities is, in fact, a core responsibility of senior executives and board directors. Conversations with Africa Board Fellows demonstrate that boards <em>can</em> prepare by:
<ul>
 	<li>Anticipating and minimizing the likelihood of adverse external developments</li>
 	<li>Reducing the vulnerability of the institution to such shocks</li>
 	<li>Enhancing the resilience (ability to recover) of the institution to the situations it will inevitably face</li>
</ul>
We’ll tackle the first point on anticipating and minimizing shocks here. We’ll cover the last two points in our next post in this <a href="https://cfi-blog.org/tag/abf-blog-series/">series</a>.
<h3>Anticipating Challenges with an Ear to the Ground</h3>
<img class=" wp-image-25790 alignright" src="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/08/how-to-anticipate-changes-as-a-board-member.png" alt="how to anticipate changes as a board member" width="196" height="330" />The first step is to anticipate – and hence be prepared to mitigate – challenges. To do this, board directors must keep abreast of new entrants, potential disruptions, and promising opportunities in the marketplace. Directors cannot rely solely on management for this information. Instead, they should develop their own sources to supplement and confirm management’s view, such as by networking with industry observers and analysts–with management’s knowledge, of course. Locally based board members have an advantage in developing and maintaining such networks, which is one reason it is important to recruit qualified local directors. For example, finding and retaining qualified local directors has been a priority for FSSL South Sudan, given the ongoing political disturbances in the country that make it difficult to maintain continuity of leadership.
<p style="text-align: left">Talking frequently with FSP staff and clients is another way board directors can anticipate challenges. Frontline staff are in a position to report on competition, clients and local happenings. And it should go without saying – but always bears repeating – that clients can provide ground-level insight. Clients may reveal such things as their vulnerability to displacement in government raids on the informal sector or the inability to import goods. When ABF fellows from the Ivory Coast conducted client visits, these were some of the specific challenges about which they learned.</p>

<h3>Getting Ahead of Operating Challenges with Active Participation</h3>
While they can never control the external environment, board members can help shape it to some degree through the following:
<ul>
 	<li><strong><em>Create and participate in industry associations; promote and follow codes of conduct</em></strong>. Industry associations establish frameworks for fair practices and client protection and help facilitate self-regulation and compliance with governance and transparency requirements. An active industry association can also work closely with regulators and other government actors to help shape legislation, regulation and perceptions of the industry, which are all key features of the operating environment. Board directors should support and encourage management to devote time to nurturing strong associations – a medium term project – and engage directly with other FSP board directors to make this an industry priority. As one example, Barnabe Francois, CEO of Microcred Ivory Coast, <a href="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/07/barnabe_francois_microcred.pdf">has been an active member of banking associations</a>, first in Madagascar and subsequently in Ivory Coast.</li>
 	<li><strong><em>Develop relationships with regulators and government officials. </em></strong>To reinforce the efforts of industry associations, FSP management can also cultivate relationships with government officials to advocate and educate them (and the media) on operating environment challenges. Board directors, particularly well-regarded locally-based directors, can greatly enhance the effectiveness of such engagement. Or, like MicroCred Zimbabwe, the FSP can appoint an experienced bank regulator to the board (perhaps, a retired official or someone who worked in another country) who understands how regulatory bodies work and can connect on a peer-to-peer basis with regulators.</li>
 	<li><strong><em>Build clients’ financial capability</em></strong>. An important aspect of an FSP’s risk management responsibilities is ensuring that clients use financial services responsibly and productively. Misunderstanding how financial services work can lead to multiple borrowing, or mismatched cash flows which often threaten clients’ ability to repay their loans. To ensure good value to clients and the long-term viability of the FSP, board directors should encourage management to include initiatives in strategic plans to help clients build their financial skills and practice good habits.</li>
</ul>
<ol>
 	<li style="list-style-type: none"></li>
</ol>
Such efforts can, over the medium term, reduce the likelihood that an FSP or the entire sector will face certain types of challenges and will help position providers to take advantage of new opportunities.

<em>Stay tuned for the next blog in this series</em><em>, which will highlight reducing an FSP’s vulnerability to external shocks, as well as enhancing resilience.</em>
<h4><strong><i><span style="margin: 0;font-family: 'Calibri', sans-serif"><span style="color: #000000">CFI is currently recruiting fellows for the next cohort of the </span><a href="https://content.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/about/what-we-do/africa-board-fellowship-program/">Africa Board Fellowship Program</a><span style="color: #000000">. If you or someone you know is a board member or executive at an Africa-based MFI or financial service provider, we recommend considering this opportunity.</span></span></i></strong></h4>
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Navigating Challenges Is What Boards Are All About – Part 1: Anticipating Challenges

Anna Kanze

"Just as impact is in the eye of the investor, so too are good or poor returns."

<em>&gt; Posted by Paul DiLeo, Todd A. Watkins, and Anna Kanze</em>

<img class="alignright wp-image-23528" src="https://centerforfinancialinclusionblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/notes-514998_1920.jpg" alt="" width="314" height="206" />Discussion of impact investing has grown increasingly heated. There’s a conference nearly every week. Several weekly clipping services­—even a daily one—share news of the latest investments and conversions: 100% for impact! New benchmarks! New sectors! Perpetual motion! What fuel is creating this heat? The cold conviction that someday soon, all investing will be impact investing!

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe worried about losing its gravitational pull, a debate waxes and wanes over whether microfinance should be disqualified as an impact investment, either because its subsidized, non-profit origins magnetically repel VCs or because randomized controlled trials find that the average benefit to clients of microcredit is modest.

Which is ironic, because microfinance and its sister star, financial inclusion, remain the largest impact sectors in annual investor surveys.

This hyperactivity and incoherence can only mean one thing: the term “impact investing” has achieved its financial industry apotheosis: it means whatever we need it to mean. It’s a gaseous cloud that shapeshifts depending on who’s looking.

Into this chaos stepped 32 microfinance and impact investing participants and analysts from around the world who convened March 31-April 1, hosted by Lehigh University’s <a href="http://cbe.lehigh.edu/martindale">Martindale Center</a>, with support from the <a href="http://calmeadow.com/">Calmeadow Foundation</a> and the <a href="http://fiecouncil.com/">Financial Inclusion Equity Council</a> (of which CFI is the secretariat). The mission: to explore what microfinance has achieved, what it can yet accomplish, and to seek out lessons that might inform the design and execution of other business models (potential impact investments) with non-financial as well as financial objectives.

The discussion largely acknowledged the reality that the impact investing nebula is whatever an investor thinks it is. It’s not that the activity the term purports to encompass has consolidated into an important position in the investment universe, but rather that the term has outlived its usefulness. It is time to jettison the term and in its place require more specificity, rigor and accountability from investors and entrepreneurs.

The dialogue reflected the many perspectives that animate impact debates. Must impact investments improve the lives and prospects of the poor? Or can activities that have no deliberate targeting of the poor, like renewable energy in rich countries or organic baby food, qualify? Do high, market, or superior financial return<strong>—</strong>pick one—disqualify a company? Does any company that provides products and services that poor or marginalized people purchase automatically qualify? Does an impact business model that achieves commercial success and reliable access to conventional capital lose its impact label? Are impact companies only those that require non-commercial impulses—eternal subsidy or heartstring-tugging photos—to push capital their way?

Despite reprising these long-running debates with no more consensus than in previous iterations, a more pragmatic and substantive alternative emerged to the “Impact or Not” movie we’ve been reliving like Groundhog Day for the last few years.

What signal triggered the consensus? The largely unremarked fact that “impact” is no longer a matter of faith or intention. Rather, four decades of experience and research have tested the efficacy of specific business models, products and services in achieving their non-financial goals, such as better school attendance, better health, or greater productivity. So too, much progress has been made in collecting data, setting conventions, and benchmarking performance with respect to non-financial value. Just maybe, the nebula’s multiple dimensions and fuzzy borders can be mapped.

The filter that separates microfinance and all “impact” businesses from other investments is a more demanding standard that requires assessment of the kind of non-financial value that is both intended and actually created. From this perspective, the holy grail of impact metrics—a common scale that will enable us to rank the impact of budget schools, working capital loans, health screening, and off-grid energy—is an unnecessary distraction. Instead, as several participants insisted, impact can take many forms, but investors must clearly state what they intend in terms of non-financial results, subject to the same scrutiny and third-party validation as their financial statements.

With the non-financial objective specified and research in hand, investors can decide for themselves what impact they wish to consider. More low-income finance? Increased school attendance by girls? Less carbon? Jobs? Savings?

Likewise, the continually recurring conversation on trade-offs between impact and market returns can be exited. Just as impact is in the eye of the investor, so too are good or poor returns.

Only two standardized contrivances need be of use: an “anti-hypocrisy” screen, like the Global Impact Investment Rating System (<a href="http://giirs.nonprofitsoapbox.com/about-giirs/about">GIIRS</a>), that scrutinizes a company’s HR, supply chain, environmental, and community practices to ensure the company isn’t making the world better by exploiting its workers or consumers or ravaging its community; and a corporate structure, like the Public Benefit Corp in the U.S., that discourages a company from abandoning its non-financial objectives once it achieves commercial viability thanks to the impact subsidy it enjoyed.

The Lehigh gathering focused on how microfinance could leverage its uniquely successful business model and market penetration to generate even more financial and non-financial value and retain its ability to innovate and execute at scale. This discussion delivered a welcome escape from the unproductive noise and hype surrounding the term “impact,” and redefined the challenge and the way forward based both on the microfinance experience and the solid base of research it has inspired.

<em>Paul DiLeo and Anna Kanze are Investment Managers at Grassroots Capital Management, PBC.  Todd A. Watkins is Professor of Economics, and Executive Director of the Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise at Lehigh University</em>.

<em>Also check out their related commentary: <a href="https://cfi-blog.org/2017/04/20/microfinance-is-dead-long-live-microfinance/">Microfinance Is Dead; Long Live Microfinance!</a></em>

<em>For video recordings of the Martindale Center event discussions, click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30fMMRd3G_6gzZfFsSeOrSqntz90KSNR">here</a>.</em>

<strong>Have you read?</strong>

<a href="https://cfi-blog.org/2015/03/03/what-impact-investors-could-learn-from-microfinance/">What Impact Investors Could Learn from Microfinance</a>

<a href="https://cfi-blog.org/2017/03/22/how-water-org-took-a-leap-of-faith-into-social-impact-investing/">How Water.org 'Took a Leap of Faith' into Social Impact Investing</a>

<a href="https://cfi-blog.org/2017/03/17/whats-responsible-about-impact-investing-exits/">What's "Responsible" About Impact Investing Exits?</a>

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Time to Ditch Impact Investing’s Unproductive Self-Analysis

Most foundations and development finance institutions have moved on from microfinance, in search of the leading edge of innovation and impact. They have concluded that their work is done now that leading microfinance institutions (MFIs) have definitively cracked the capital markets with healthy balance sheets and two large, heavily oversubscribed Indian IPOs just in the last year. Meanwhile, impact investors, particularly in the U.S., are divided on whether microfinance is, or ever was, an impact investment. In any case, they prefer to focus their attention on new “disruptive” business models. In impact industry publications, conferences and even terminology, microfinance is dead; yesterday’s solution at best.

Fortunately for people at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), no one told microfinance that it has died. The robust IPOs and active trend of mergers and acquisitions indicate healthy commercial capital market interest. More importantly, the industry now has a central role in national financial systems all over the world, with hundreds of millions of clients, affected household members likely approaching one billion, and penetration into the majority of low-income communities in the world. The idea that the poor can constructively use and be sustainably provided with a comprehensive range of financial services—unthinkable 20 years ago—is no longer debated. Policymakers and mainstream financial institutions have recognized that a dynamic BOP finance sector fosters both equitable and sustainable development and the health of national financial systems and economies. And simply from an institutional standpoint, as David Roodman has noted, “From the point of development as industry building, support for microfinance has succeeded…in building microfinance institutions and industries that cater to poor people, create jobs, that enrich the national economic fabric.” It also bears mentioning that the poor people at heart of the industry are overwhelmingly female.

In the context of these mirror image appraisals, 32 microfinance and impact investing participants and analysts from around the world convened March 31 - April 1, hosted by Lehigh University’s <a href="http://cbe.lehigh.edu/martindale">Martindale Center</a>, and sponsored by the <a href="http://calmeadow.com/">Calmeadow Foundation</a> and the <a href="http://fiecouncil.com/">Financial Inclusion Equity Council</a> (of which CFI is the secretariat) to explore what role microfinance will play going forward. Overall, the group agreed that while dead to some, microfinance is alive and kicking on the ground and vigorously generating diverse business models and approaches to building economies and social value.

Around the world, microfinance is employing evolving models as it takes its place in the financial and economic development landscapes: mainstream commercial banks downscaling; specialized banks branching into SME lending, housing and other subsectors; mobile banking; agricultural finance; and microinsurance. And in nearly all countries, a substantial subset of MFIs are continuously experimenting on ways to blend commercial and social missions, building on sustainable financial foundations to diversify product offerings beyond microcredit to meet more of their clients’ varied needs.

As we will explore in subsequent blogs in this series, these various models challenge microfinance to revisit its role in creating social value for the client. The pursuit of scale and efficiency often—but certainly not always—implies “mission drift”. It also remains to be seen whether mission-led MFIs are the most effective means to build social value for poor clients in a world where mobile and digital technologies can reach the previously excluded at a fraction of the cost of traditional microfinance models and potentially deliver valuable information and education as a bonus.

More fundamentally, skepticism over the future of microfinance reflects doubts that today’s leading incumbent MFIs—once the disruptive innovators themselves—can ever generate disruptive forces of the magnitude needed to make meaningful progress towards achieving objectives as ambitious as the Sustainable Development Goals. Quite conceivably, the future lies with new models, like digital financial services, that reduce costs through substitutes for face-to-face interaction, reduce risk via data and algorithms, and increase outreach by saying yes to more potential clients with customized, individually-tailored product design and delivery.

The future of microfinance and the challenge for those who prioritize social value for clients is in taking advantage of the strengths of incumbent MFIs, particularly their proximity to clients: a four-decades-deep, hard-earned understanding of heterogeneous needs at the BOP. As donor and impact investor attention is captured by shiny new frontiers—health care, budget schools, smallholder agriculture, off-grid energy—MFIs that want to build on the value of this experience face two challenges.

First, those in the microfinance sector must convincingly deliver to impact investors the (often unwelcome) message that MFIs—professionally governed, managed and staffed, with reliable access to capital markets, diversified product offerings, and unique penetration at the BOP—offer the best available platform to design, test and in many cases deliver—directly or as orchestrator—products and services to create social value. Even where new channels or specialized institutions can be effective, as in the case of mobile money or housing finance, new entrants will need to learn how to fit narrow product expertise into the complex and sophisticated financial lives of poor people, much as microfinance needed to learn that clients need more than a three month group loan with weekly repayments.

Second, while the bulk of microfinance portfolios may be fully commercially sustainable and attractive to conventional investors, innovation and experimentation to reach the still-excluded continue to require patient, mission-aligned investors, grant subsidies or below-market financing—the model that fertilized microfinance to begin with. More than the success of microfinance on purely commercial terms, this central and essential role of subsidy—not for market distorting price reductions, but rather for innovation, infrastructure and capacity building—is the salient takeaway from microfinance for impact investing more broadly.

The fact that so many donors and impact investors view <em>microfinance as dead</em> undermines the ability of the industry to further strengthen through trial and error the robust business model that underlies its current success and stature—and inspires today’s exuberance for “impact investing”.  Microfinance is alive, well and firmly integrated into global mainstream capital markets. But to reclaim top rank status as a destination for impact investments, MFIs must redouble efforts to distinguish themselves by focusing on client outcomes and serve as the labs of innovation in product design and delivery to build social value.

<em>Paul DiLeo and Anna Kanze are Investment Managers at Grassroots Capital Management, PBC.  Todd Watkins is Director of the Martindale Center at Lehigh University. </em>

<em>For video recordings of the Martindale Center event discussions, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30fMMRd3G_6gzZfFsSeOrSqntz90KSNR">click here</a>.</em>

<em>Todd Watkins contributed to this post.
</em>

<strong>Have you read?</strong>

<a href="https://cfi-blog.org/2016/12/07/can-social-missions-be-preserved-in-initial-public-offerings/">Can Social Missions Be Preserved in Initial Public Offerings?</a>

<a href="https://cfi-blog.org/2017/01/26/a-tale-of-four-ipos-is-public-investment-in-microfinance-becoming-ok-again/">A Tale of Four IPOs: Is Public Investment in Microfinance Becoming OK Again?</a>

<a href="https://cfi-blog.org/2017/04/12/whos-responsible-for-responsible-impact-investing-exits/">Who's Responsible for 'Responsible' Impact Investing Exits?</a>

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Paul DiLeo

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