Chuck Waterfield and Alexandra Fiorillo, MFTransparency’s CEO and VP respectively, have been doing many presentations about how interest rates can be calculated using our excel tool, but we haven’t yet featured a story on our blog about our data collection process and our corresponding excel tool. Although technical, interest rate calculations are really at the heart of MFTransparency’s mission and calculating accurate interest rates is vital to providing transparent pricing data.

Microfinance Focus: Microfinance Institutions Network (MFIN), a newly formed body of NBFC-MFIs in India has decided to carry out an in-depth study of the status and level of transparency in its network members and suggest measures to improve the situation, if required, said sources in the industry.

#mifimon (Microfinance Mondays) is a biweekly Twitter discussion group that aims to host an exchange ideas about issues relevant to the microfinance industry. Every Monday, for about two hours, a group of tweeters interested in microfinance discusses a wide range of topics such as Microfinance and Technology, Women and Microfinance, and many more.

According to a recent report by MicroCapital, a new bill introduced in the Indian parliament would remove the existing cap on microloan interest rates. This has important implications for transparency, and provides a unique opportunity to examine the effects of rate caps on microfinance.

At the end of last year, the MIX (Microfinance Information Exchange) relaunched their website with the help of the MasterCard Foundation (click here for their official press release). For those familiar with the MIX, you’ll know that they have implemented some major changes in the last few months culminating in this relaunch. All in all, I’m very impressed with the new look and more importantly, the increased functionality of the website.

In my last post, I examined data for Russia, Mexico and India, three large microfinance markets in different regions. We looked at the correlation between portfolio yield and loan size and discussed interest rates and profitability for MFIs with different focuses in terms of rural/urban populations and share of female clients. Comparing these markets, we observed a much broader range of yields in the Russian and Mexican market as compared to the Indian market.

All around the world, our thoughts are with the Haitian people, as they work together to overcome yet another tragic situation. The Haitian proverb – beyond mountains, more mountains – has been so poignantly true for them.

After decades of innovation and experimentation, microfinance sectors worldwide have achieved impressive successes. The microfinance community has joined efforts to achieve worldwide public recognition of microfinance as an effective and sustainable bottom-up approach to economic empowerment and consumption smoothing.

Jambo! I would like to share a bit in this post about recent work in Kenya, where I spent three weeks in January with Alexandra Fiorillo (Vice President, MFTransparency) continuing the data collection process for MFTransparency’s Transparent Pricing Initiative in Kenya.

We have looked at the correlation between loan size and portfolio yield on several occasions and noticed that the shape of the curve closely follows that of loan size and operating expenses. For several markets, these country graphs suggest that a number of MFIs are making yields above the market average in a given loan-size category.