Microfinance

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Microfinance consists of financial services targeting individuals and small businesses who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems, among other services.^[1][2] Microfinance services are designed to reach excluded customers, usually low income population segments, possibly socially marginalized, or geographically more isolated, and to help them become self-sufficient.^[2][3] ID Ghana is an example of a microfinance institution.

Microfinance initially had a limited definition: the provision of microloans to small scale entrepreneurs and small(informal sectors) businesses lacking access to credit.^[4] The two main mechanisms for the delivery of financial services to such clients were: (1) relationship-based banking for individual entrepreneurs and small businesses; and (2) group-based model, where several entrepreneurs come together to apply for loans and other services as a group. Over time, microfinance has emerged as a larger movement whose object is: "a world in which as everyone, especially the lower income classes and socially marginalized people and households have access to a wide range of affordable, high quality financial products and services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, payment services, and fund transfers."^[3]

Proponents of microfinance often claim that such access will help struggling classes out of poverty, including participants in the Microcredit Summit Campaign. For many, microfinance is a way to promote economic development, employment and growth through the support of micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses; for others it is a way for the disadvantaged/ less privileged to manage their finances more effectively and take advantage of economic opportunities while managing the risks. Critics often point to some of the ills of micro-credit that can create indebtedness. Many studies have tried to assess its impacts.^[5]

New research in the area of microfinance calls for better understanding of the microfinance ecosystem so that the microfinance institutions and other facilitators can formulate sustainable strategies that will help create social benefits through better service delivery to the low-income population.^[6][7]