小额信贷的可持续发展问题.docVIP

原文 The Question of Sustainability for Microfinance Institutions 1.Preface Microentrepreneurs have considerable difficulty accessing capital from mainstream financial institutions. One key reason is that the costs of information about the characteristics and risk levels of borrowers are high. Relationship-based financing has been promoted as a potential solution to information asymmetry problems in the distribution of credit to small businesses. In this paper, we seek to better understand the implications for providers of “microfinance” in pursuing such a strategy. We discuss relationship-based financing as practiced by microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the United States, analyze their lending process, and present a model for determining the break-even price of a microcredit product. Comparing the model’s results with actual prices offered by existing institutions reveals that credit is generally being offered at a range of subsidized rates to microentrepreneurs. This means that MFIs have to raise additional resources from grants or other funds each year to sustain their operations as few are able to survive on the income generated from their lending and related operations. Such subsidization of credit has implications for the long-term sustainability of institutions serving this market and can help explain why mainstream financial institutions have not directly funded microenterprises. We conclude with a discussion of the role of nonprofit organizations in small business credit markets, the impact of pricing on their potential sustainability and self-sufficiency, and the implications for strategies to better structure the credit market for microbusinesses. 2.The MFI Lending Model in the United States Marketing Marketing drives the business model in terms of the volume of potential borrowers that an MFI is able to access and the pool of loans it can develop. Given that MFIs do not accept deposits and have no formal prior insight into a fresh potential customer bas