Potential at bottom of pyramid

In an effort to head off a potential crisis in the fast-expanding micro-finance industry, its leaders are adopting global truth-in-lending standards and creating a system for comparing loan terms offered by competing lenders.To manage the effort, a new self-monitoring organisation, MicroFinance Transparency, is being set up as the industry’s policeman. The goal is to prevent companies from taking advantage of poor people with high interest rates and misleading credit offers.

The initiative was announced at a micro-credit conference in Bali by Chuck Waterfield, a professor at Columbia University who spearheaded the initiative and Yunus, who launched the micro-credit revolution in Bangladesh 30 years ago with his Grameen Bank.

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