FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE FUTURE OF MICROFINANCE PART I

Le CGAP a élaboré plusieurs scénarios pour anticiper les facteurs qui détermineront l’avenir de la microfinance à un niveau mondial. Les effets potentiels de ces facteurs sont analysés afin de formuler des scénarios positifs et négatifs à l’horizon 2015 susceptibles d’éclairer dès à présent les acteurs de la microfinance. Cette étude spéciale examine ces facteurs et les applique à quatre scénarios.

"CGAP recently undertook a scenario-building exercise to help anticipate and prepare
for the global demographic, political, and technological forces that will shape the future of
microfinance. We and a wide range of outside experts grappled with the potential impact
of these forces in order to craft positive and negative scenarios for the year 2015 that might
instruct the microfinance actors today. This Focus Note examines these forces and applies
them to four scenarios. The Note ends with broad recommendations for how the international community can prepare for and respond to these scenarios.

The last two decades have witnessed a powerful opening up of the world of microfinance. Beginning in the early 1990s, the development community came to realize that microcredit providers could recover loans to poor and low-income people and cover their costs, and thus reach large numbers of people. At that time, donors and microfinance providers alike focused primarily on a single product (credit) for a particular client group (microentrepreneurs). Microcredit was delivered mainly by specialized microfinance institutions (MFIs), most of which were nongovernmental organizations.

Over time, the notion of microcredit broadened first from microcredit into microfinance then into the concept of building entire financial systems that serve their poor and low-income populations—financial systems that are “inclusive.” This new, more ambitious and complex vision has captured the attention of governments, international financial institutions, philanthropists, social investors, mainstream bankers, and even some royalty and celebrities.

We now understand that poor and low-income people can fruitfully use and pay for a range of financial services. Financial services for the poor are delivered by banks and other retail organizations as well as NGOs. A few years ago, CGAP research identified well over 750 million savings and loan accounts in institutions that cater to the lower economic strata; 74 percent of these were in state-owned savings, development, and postal banks.1 A second study by Peachy and Roe identified over 1.4 billion accessible

We know that microfinance can be robustly profitable. A 38-country analysis found that MFIs with publicly available performance information were more profitable on average than the commercial banks in those same countries.

We know that when the model is right, microfinance grows fast: over the last decade, borrowers from MFIs worldwide have grown by 13–15 percent a year, implying a doubling of outreach every 7 years.

On the otherhand, these growth rates pale when compared to the growth of mobile phone subscribers, which has averaged almost 60 percent per year from 1999 to 2004. Sub-Saharan Africa’s mobile market has grown 82 percent per year.

Despite the improvements in financial access, two-thirds of the world’s adults still do not have a basic bank account.6 Access to a bank account is only one dimension of financial inclusion, but it is an important one. A basic bank account is the entry point that allows customers to save money outside the household, make loan or premium payments, or transfer funds within their country or across borders. More than 80 percent of households have bank accounts in high-income countries, compared to well below 20 percent in low-income countries. In countries like Bangladesh or Sudan, that number hovers just above zero. "

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