> Posted by Center Staff
Beth Rhyne’s latest contribution to the Huffington Post examines how the industry is putting its own practices under the microscope, with an eye to making good consumer protection practices part of microfinance’s DNA. The piece begins as follows:
Judging from last year’s lobbying by the financial sector to block the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one would think banks are just plain anti-consumer protection regulation, almost by reflex. That’s why it is so encouraging to see the global microfinance industry embrace a campaign to promote strong consumer protection principles.
Like the mainstream financial sector, the microfinance industry has come in for criticism in the past year. Problems of over-indebtedness among microfinance clients surfaced in India, Nicaragua and a few other countries. Given that their clients are among the vulnerable people of the world, providers of microfinance take such problems very seriously. Across the microfinance industry a deep examination of performance is under way, as well as work to create structures that will incentivize good practices.
To read the rest of this piece on the Huffington Post, please click here.
Have you read?
Three Secrets of Safe Microfinance
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