microfinance

Kashf Foundation founder Roshaneh Zafar reflects on three decades of microfinance in Pakistan – from replicating the Grameen model to pioneering gender bonds, micro-insurance, and climate-resilient lending for over one million women clients.

Peer-led endorsement doubled mobile banking uptake and increased formal savings among women in Ghana.

Performance-linked contracts, increasingly enabled by financial technology, can better spur investment among small firms than rigid microcredit—especially for risk- and loss-averse business owners.

Bundling health insurance with microcredit reduced out-of-pocket health expenses by 50% among informal workers in Burkina Faso without decreasing microcredit uptake, offering a promising pathway to universal health coverage.

Research shows that microfinance clients use credit and savings as commitment devices to accumulate lump sums. Evidence from Pakistan suggests high demand for fixed-repayment contracts, but low demand for commitment add-ons in both credit and savings...

Mobile connectivity improves access to land, enabling individuals to use land titles as collateral for bank credit and invest in construction.

Evidence from a range of contexts has shown that while microfinance does not have transformative impacts on lifting people out of poverty, it can greatly benefit specific borrowers such as experienced entrepreneurs.

Evidence from a large-scale trial in Bangladesh shows that improving credit access in rural areas helped farmers adapt to flood risks without negative spillovers, and was profitable for microfinance institutions.