Microfinance Focus, December 28, 2010: Microfinance Focus recently floated an open discussion on LinkedIn to gauge industry perspective on – ‘What are the Crisis Management Measures microfinance institutions should take to sustain and keep going in turbulence time’. The discussion received a fervent response from microfinance stakeholders including practitioners, advisors and funders. Edited excerpts of their recommendations:

Brahmanand Hegde, Founder-Director at Vistaar Livelihood Finance, Mumbai

Microfinance Focus, by Bruce Meraviglia : Unfortunately for most small businesses in the developing world, the levels of venture capital that are available exceed what they can either qualify to receive, or effectively use if it were provided to them; in a growing business, oftentimes too much success (or, in this case, venture capital) can be as deadly as too little success.
 

Microfinance Focus, by Bruce Meraviglia : In the early 1990’s, Robert Kaplan, a PhD-level professor of accounting at Harvard University, wrote a series of papers on how business should (could) consider the value of IT.  His principal position was that traditional accounting standards had no valid methodology for quantifying the value of IT in terms of its benefits to the organization (beyond the level of saying that an administrative assistant could type more letters with a computer than a typewriter).
 

Microfinance Focus, Nov. 4, 2009: The ongoing Nicaraguan “No Pay” movement, which began Spring 2008 in the north of the country, is an example of an organized protest movement against microfinance institutions. Fueled by a spike in defaults caused by the economic crisis and allegations of excessive interest rates, customer over-indebtedness and heavy-handed tactics by some MFIs to reclaim loans.

Microfinance Focus, July 20, 2009: Flexibility in microfinance/micro credit loans will help the sector tide over many new challenges, Grameen Foundation CEO Alex Counts has said in a recent interview to Microfinance Focus.

Microfinance Focus, Aug. 22, 2009: There have been startling losses in microfinance institutions that have wandered too far from their original microfinance mission due to fierce competition or of profit-minded management, writes David MacDougall, Director of Risk Management at Swiss microfinance fund manager BlueOrchard.