Evolution of Transparent Pricing in Microfinance
MFTransparency has celebrated the fifth anniversary of its founding on July 28th 2008 at the MicroCredit Summit in Bali, Indonesia, with a series of activities over the course of the month of August. Each week of the month of August was dedicated to featuring some of our most prominent work and activities, including a video on MFTransparency’s website, the launch of the new Truth in Lending Tables (TILT) which are explained in a TILT CSV Overview video, the publication of a dictionary as a resource to be used to understand the terms used in the TILT, the publication of a blog post on the Country Pricing Reports which are soon to be published on the MFTransparency website, and finally a resource on MFTransparency in a Snapshot .
While these have been inward looking – for the most part – we would also like to introduce a series of videos over the coming months that present the thoughts and insights of some of the key industry leaders on the evolution of the transparent pricing movement in microfinance.
Microfinance has long been highly transparent in some areas, but due to complications of market conditions and lack of regulation, the true price of loan products has never been accurately measured or reported. Non-transparency has not only damaged the public image of the industry, but has encouraged political and regulatory reactions, such as interest rate caps, that have reduced the availability of credit to the poor. As an essential pre-requisite of consumer protection, social performance and responsible microfinance, pricing transparency is a topic of great interest for different industry stakeholders.
This first video traces the evolution of the pricing transparency movement in microfinance. We have asked four industry leaders; namely, Chuck Waterfield – CEO of MFTransparency, Mårten Leijon – CEO of Microfinance Information eXchange (MIX), Paul DiLeo – Founder and Managing Partner of Grassroots Capital Management PBC, and Rupert Scofield – CEO of FINCA to describe the evolution of the pricing transparency movement for microfinance from their different points of view.
To hear what these industry leaders had to say about the evolution of pricing transparency in microfinance, watch this video here:
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