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Coming Soon: Country Pricing Reports

Published on August 21, 2013

In celebration of MFTransparency’s fifth anniversary, we are featuring some of our most important work and activities over the month of August.  Amongst our new educational outputs will be the groundbreaking Country Pricing Reports (CPRs) which we expect to publish over the coming few weeks.

These cutting-edge reports were prepared in partnership with Planet Rating and with funding from MasterCard Foundation.  The CPRs will provide in-depth analysis of new pricing data from different countries, drawing out key themes, features and trends in each country’s microfinance pricing.  These reports are based on data collected via the Transparent Pricing Initiative which has been pivoted through the newly published Truth in Lending Tables (TILT).  A sophisticated interactive analysis tool, which will also be published soon, will enable you to generate many of the tables and graphs that are included in the CPRs using built-in tables and filterable graphs.

The reports include tables that provide Institutional Data, Product Data, Price Data, Fees Data, and Sample Data.  A comprehensive TILT Dictionary of terms used in these tables can be found as a resource on our website.  In addition, the CPRs include a glossary of key terms used throughout the report.

Some of the new interesting data that will be revealed in the reports for the first time include a table that illustrate theTable 1 level of transparency of microfinance institutions (MFIs) based on age of data and reporting to the Microfinance Information eXchange (MIX) and MFTransparency in addition to availability of rating reports.  This table also shows changes in MFIs’ Transparency Index (a scale for rating the level of transparency of a true price) based on the two time reporting of pricing data to MFTransparency.

Another very important table that provides a wealth of information is the Pricing Components table.  This tables showsPrice Components products with specific pricing characteristics and details out the different pricing combinations.  It also illustrates the number of clients receiving these products with the various pricing components and combinations.  With the most transparent price being ” interest” only (specifically declining interest), the table illustrates the various other pricing components which most products include on top of interest; such as fees, insurance, and compulsory deposits. These price components are included by MFTransparency when calculating true prices of a product if they are a requirement for the clients to receive the loan.

In addition, to MFTransparency’s famous pricing graphs, the CPRs have new graphs that are able to capture a number of new attributes.  Specifically, the reports include graphs that show the correlation between Full APR and Loan Amount ranges, Full APR and Loan Term, Full APR and Loan Purpose (whether business, housing, consumer, education, any purpose, or multipurpose loan), and Full APR and Scale (portfolio), and finally Full APR and Institutional Type.  All of these graphs are 3-dimensional – so in addition to the X and Y axes attributes, the size of each data point on the graphs relates to the number of borrowers who have a loan of that product in that size; whereby, the larger the data point the higher the number of borrowers who have that specific loan.

Graph 1   Graph 3

It should also be noted that some of the reports  include case studies on particular MFIs to provide further analysis of some aspects of pricing transparency institutional performance in some countries.

The institution and product level tables and graphs in the CPRs are examined within country-level context and include insightful analysis that leaves the readers asking more questions and probing into the data further to learn more.  For those interested to take this to a deeper analytical level, they can contact us at [email protected]  to receive the raw data used in these reports in Excel format.

We hope that you will enjoy reading and learning from these reports.  The CPRs will be available for download on the MFTransparency website in early September- so stay tuned!

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