Question

a. Why is provision of payment services complicated for microfinance institutions (MFIs)? What is a possible solution that helps MFIs to offer payment services?

b. Why are regulations designed for commercial banks not suitable for MFIs?

Answer 1

a. Why is provision of payment services complicated for microfinance institutions (MFIs)? What is a possible solution that helps MFIs to offer payment services?

Micro Financial Institutions

Poverty is the main cause of concern in improving the economic status of developing countries. A microfinance institution is an organization that offers financial services to low income populations. Almost all give loans to their members, and many offer insurance, deposit and other services.

A great scale of organizations is regarded as microfinance institutes. They are those that offer credits and other financial services to the representatives of poor strata of population (except for extremely poor strata).

Microfinance is increasingly being considered as one of the most effective tools of reducing poverty by enabling microcredit to the financial poor. Microfinance has a significant role in bridging the gap between the formal financial institutions and the rural poor. The Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) accesses financial resources from the Banks and other mainstream Financial Institutions and provide financial and support services to the poor.

MFIs are the pivotal overseas organizations in each country that make individual microcredit loans directly to villagers, microentrepreneurs, impoverished women and poor families. An overseas MFI is like a small bank with the same challenges and capital needs confronting any expanding small venture but with the added responsibility of serving economically-marginalized populations. Many MFIs are creditworthy and well-run with proven records of success, many are operationally self-sufficient.

Various types of institutions offer microfinance: credit unions, commercial banks, NGOs (Non-governmental Organizations), cooperatives, and sectors of government banks. The emergence of “for-profit” MFIs is growing. In India , these ‘for-profit’ MFIs are referred to as Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFC). NGOs mainly work in remote rural areas thereby providing financial services to the persons with no access to banking services.

The term “transformation,” or commercialization, of a microfinance institution (MFI) refers to a change in legal status from an unregulated nonprofit or non-governmental organization (NGO) into a regulated, for-profit institution. Regulated, transformed organizations differ from nonprofits in that they are held to performance and capital adequacy standards and are supervised by a financial authority, typically the central bank of the country where they are registered. A transformed MFI also attracts equity investors. The equity investors want to ensure that the values of their investments are maintained or enhanced and elect Board members who share a common vision for the new for-profit institution. Among transformed MFIs, varying classifications of regulated institutions exist, the strictest being banks — rural banks and thrift banks — followed by non-bank financial institutions. Different countries have varied names for these regulated MFIs.

The microfinance sector consistently focuses on understanding the needs of the poor and on devising better ways of delivering services in line with their requirements, developing the most efficient and effective mechanisms to deliver finance to the poor. Continuous efforts towards automation of operations is steady improving in efficiency. The automated systems have also helped accelerate the growth rate of the microfinance sector.

The goal for MFIs should be:

• To improve the quality of life of the poor by providing access to financial and support services;

• To be a viable financial institution developing sustainable communities;

• To mobilize resources in order to provide financial and support services to the poor, particularly women, for viable productive income generation enterprises enabling them to reduce their poverty;

• Learn and evaluate what helps people to move out of poverty faster;

• To create opportunities for selfemployment for the underprivileged;

• To train rural poor in simple skills and enable them to utilize the available resources and contribute to employment and income generation in rural areas.

b. Why are regulations designed for commercial banks not suitable for MFIs?

Commercial Bank

A commercial bank is a financial institution that grants loans, accepts deposits, and offers basic financial products such as savings accounts and certificates of deposit to individuals and businesses. It makes money primarily by providing different types of loans to customers and charging interest.

Before determining loan price one should take these two costs; Administrative costs by the bank(MFI) and transaction cost by the client/customer. Customers, on the other hand, may have expenses for travelling to the bank branch, acquiring official documents for the loan application, and loss of time when dealing with the MFI (“opportunity costs”). Hence, from a customer's point of view the cost of a loan is not only the interest and fees she/he has to pay, but also all other transaction costs that she/he has to cover.

One of the principal challenges of microfinance is providing small loans at an affordable cost. The global average interest and fee rate is estimated at 37%, with rates reaching as high as 70% in some markets.The reason for the high interest rates is not primarily cost of capital. Indeed, the local microfinance organizations that receive zero-interest loan capital from the online microlending platform Kiva charge average interest and fee rates of 35.21%. Rather, the main reason for the high cost of microfinance loans is the high transaction cost of traditional microfinance operations relative to loan size.

Microfinance practitioners have long argued that such high interest rates are simply unavoidable, because the cost of making each loan cannot be reduced below a certain level while still allowing the lender to cover costs such as offices and staff salaries. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa credit risk for microfinance institutes is very high, because customers need years to improve their livelihood and face many challenges during this time. Financial institutes often do not even have a system to check the person's identity. Additionally they are unable to design new products and enlarge their business to reduce the risk. The result is that the traditional approach to microfinance has made only limited progress in resolving the problem it purports to address: that the world's poorest people pay the world's highest cost for small business growth capital. The high costs of traditional microfinance loans limit their effectiveness as a poverty-fighting tool. Offering loans at interest and fee rates of 37% mean that borrowers who do not manage to earn at least a 37% rate of return may actually end up poorer as a result of accepting the loans.

According to a recent survey of microfinance borrowers in Ghana published by the Center for Financial Inclusion, more than one-third of borrowers surveyed reported struggling to repay their loans. Some resorted to measures such as reducing their food intake or taking children out of school in order to repay microfinance debts that had not proven sufficiently profitable.

In recent years, the microfinance industry has shifted its focus from the objective of increasing the volume of lending capital available, to address the challenge of providing microfinance loans more affordably. Microfinance analyst David Roodman contends that, in mature markets, the average interest and fee rates charged by microfinance institutions tend to fall over time. However, global average interest rates for microfinance loans are still well above 30%.

The answer to providing microfinance services at an affordable cost may lie in rethinking one of the fundamental assumptions underlying microfinance: that microfinance borrowers need extensive monitoring and interaction with loan officers in order to benefit from and repay their loans. The P2P microlending service Zidisha is based on this premise, facilitating direct interaction between individual lenders and borrowers via an internet community rather than physical offices. Zidisha has managed to bring the cost of microloans to below 10% for borrowers, including interest which is paid out to lenders. However, it remains to be seen whether such radical alternative models can reach the scale necessary to compete with traditional microfinance programs.