[Microfinance] -- Microfinance needs active clients and skilled, efficient workforce

Livemint.com, a news organization partnered with the WSJ from India, ran a interesting piece today about the Microfinance industry. Good reading for readers looking for a nice synopsis of what exactly is Microfinance.

I have a included a excerpt of the article I feel is especially relavant and worthy of your attention. If you would like, you can click here to access the greater article from Livemint.com.

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Microfinance calls for active, participating clients as well as skilled and efficient work force. Its main challenge remains recovering timely repayments, considering the unstable nature of the clients’ cash flows, making efficient risk management critical to the success of an MFI.

There is also a need for constructive collaboration between the formal sector finance institutions and MFIs, in which the former provides funds and the latter extends savings and loan facilities to the urban poor. On the demand side, focus must be to organize and make clients more participative. They must be made accountable to the use of the credit given. Savings must be encouraged. On the supply side, the concentration must be to transform MFIs into professionally managed, externally regulated entities. There must be uninterrupted supply of services to clients. The profitability and viability of the service must be given importance. All MFI credit models lack an appropriate legal and financial structure and so there must be a more formal environment to regulate and coordinate the activities of MFIs. Government should provide an enabling legal and regulatory framework which encourages the development of a range of institutions and allow them to operate as recognized financial intermediaries subject to simple supervisory and reporting requirements.

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