MBB ISSUE NO. 11, 2005: FOCUS ON THE SCOPE OF FUNDING MECHANISMS

The featured articles and case studies of this issue are: “The Role of Savings as a form of MFI Funding: Debate” by Malcolm Harper and Robert Vobel; “Financial Intermediation and Integration of Regulated MFIs” by Ann Miles; “Maintaining the Bottom-Line in Investor-Owned Microfinance Organizations” by Elisabeth Rhyne; “Microfinance Profitability Index” by Julie Abrams; “Investment Benchmarks for Microfinance Institutions” by Bradley King; “XAC Bank: From the Liability Side of the Balance Sheet” by Cheryl Franckiewicz and Marc de Sousa-Shields; “The MFI as a Borrower: Institutional Characteristics and MFI Performance” by Erik Heinen; and “Assessing the Need for a National Wholesale Fund: the Case of Ecuador” by Joe Dougherty. In the Highlights section, Isabelle Barrés takes a closer look at the activities of foreign microfinance funders (MFFs), who actively support the microfinance field by providing loans, guarantees and/or equity to MFIs, while Blaine Stephens discusses the data set for benchmarking the performance of over 230 retail microfinance institutions (MFIs).