The Year in Review
This section highlights the impact of the macro economy on the microfinance industry in the country, regulatory & policy environment and industry initiatives.
Pakistan Microfinance Review (PMR) 2017
August 29, 2018
Pakistan Microfinance Review (PMR) 2017
The State of Social Audits in Microfinance In...
August 21, 2018
Over the past few years, the changing face of Pakistan’s microfinance landscape has been characterized by increased attention to the social responsibility management of microfinance providers (MFPs). Recent industry trends show an organized effort to define social performance (SP) and address concerns about its measurement and management. This has brought about an industry-wide realization that an MFP’s processes, practices and products need to be actively targeted towards achieving its social vision and social objectives. Therefore, just as financial audits are conducted to assess the financial performance of an organization, the practice of “social auditing” is being increasingly adopted as the primary diagnostic tool for assessing social performance of microfinance institutions. This micronote documents and consolidates findings from seven social audits of Pakistan Microfinance Network’s member providers, conducted over a period of two years (between 2016 - 2018).
The Launch of Pakistan’s First Microfinance...
August 17, 2018
This micronote explores the current landscape of microfinance in Pakistan over the past 10 years, followed by the emergence of Pakistan’s first credit bureau, DataCheck Ltd. The methodology employed to gauge the effectiveness of a credit bureau for the analysis in this micronote includes observing loans from up to 2 years prior to the launch of the credit bureau until present, based on four branch performance measures; number of new loans, average loan size, fraction of loans delinquent and fractions of loans defaulted. The conclusion summarizes the main findings from the study, which highlight that the credit bureau had a positive impact on loan disbursement as well as loan performance, including reduced delinquency, and branches were seen to not adopt the bureau at random, rather based on growth; branches which were growing faster were more likely to adopt.
