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Data Launch Rollout Plan

Published on October 14, 2009

For the first time in history, the microfinance transparency movement is going to provide extensive, accurate microfinance product pricing data publicly.

This data will help protect consumers, enhance services and expand access to financial services.

This major milestone is the result of months of hard work by not only our MFTransparency staff, but many others within the global microfinance industry.   Most notably, this data launch could not have happened without the strong cooperation we have received from MFIs, banks and credit unions in our first data collection efforts. All participating microfinance practitioners have voluntarilycontributed their pricing data to MFTransparency’s global Transparent Pricing Initiative.

This data will now be available for any and all to see. 

For the first time, the microfinance industry will publicly display comprehensive data on interest rates for microfinance loan products throughout a country. This data will be constantly updated as product prices change.  It will be the one and only place to find the “market price” for the majority of micro-credit products within a country.

Rollout Schedule

MFTransparency will have a phased rollout of data from our first three countries over the three-week data launch period.  More countries will be coming on-line in the coming months. Following is the schedule for the data launch:

October 19th – Bosnia Data

All members of the Association of Microfinance Institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina have submitted pricing data to us, giving us a complete picture of the microfinance loan products available from different types of lending institutions in the country. You will be able to sort through this data by loan size, interest rate and organization type.

 

October 26th – Cambodia Data

We have collected pricing data from microfinance lenders representing over 95% of the market in Cambodia, where the National Bank of Cambodia inaugurated our Transparent Pricing Initiative.

 
Week of November 9th – Webinar

Once data is available for the first three countries, we will host a webinar to discuss what the data tell us and to answer questions from those of you reviewing the data. By this time we will also have discussion boards on our website so that the discussion can continue after the webinar ends.

We would like to give special thanks to the many organizations that have provided the financial support that enabled us to collect this data and publish it on our website. 

 

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