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MFTransparency Blog  

• Transparency at the Consumer Level

  Published on March 15, 2010

  

  Over the last few weeks, I have been reviewing the Global Financial Education Program led by a strategic partnership between Microfinance Opportunities and Freedom from Hunger. The Financial Education Curriculum is targeted at households below and just above the poverty line in developing countries. So far, I have focused my review on the core curriculum which consists of five modules: budgeting, debt management, savings, bank services and financial negotiations.

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  Countries: Mexico

  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Financial Education

• Transparency, India, Gandhi, and the Seven Deadly Social Sins

  Published on March 11, 2010

  

  A few weeks ago I made an unplanned and very interesting trip to India. MFTransparency had no plans of working in India this year, but a broad group of stakeholders in the India microfinance industry had been discussing the need for pricing transparency and then invited us to come and meet with them.

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  Countries: India

  Category: MFTransparency Blog

• Mobile Banking and the Future of Transparency

  Published on March 9, 2010

  

  Mobile banking is defining modern microfinance. Within the space of a few short years it has exploded to become a hot-button issue in the microfinance community, especially because of its potential to reach the unbanked.

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  Countries: India

  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Consumer Protection

• Calculating Interest Rates Using Newton’s Method

  Published on March 5, 2010

  

  Today I’m going to demonstrate how to write a computer program that is as accurate as Excel 2007’s XIRR function. This article is likely to be of less broad interest, but it provides transparency into how we will calculate interest rates for future data collection trips; and it may be useful for MFIs that wish to automate interest rate calculations for a larger data set than can be handled with Excel.

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  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Understanding Prices

• Calculating Interest Rates with Excel

  Published on February 24, 2010

  

  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.

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  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Understanding Prices

• Twitter “Chat” on Microfinance

  Published on February 22, 2010

  

  #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.

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  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Financial Education

• Indian Interest Rate Caps and Transparency

  Published on February 19, 2010

  

  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.

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  Countries: India

  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Regulation & Policy

• Thoughts on MIX Relaunch

  Published on February 17, 2010

  

  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.

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  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Data Collection

• What Does the Data Tell Us? (Part 2)

  Published on February 15, 2010

  

  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.

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  Countries: India, Mexico, Russia

  Category: MFTransparency Blog

  Tags: Consumer Protection, Data Collection

• My Inspiration for Microfinance was Born in Haiti

  Published on February 10, 2010

  

  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.

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  Category: MFTransparency Blog