January 11, 2016
Today we’re pleased to announce the release of Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Looking to the Future, the third in a series of papers commissioned by Grameen Foundation. This series was initiated in 2005 to survey and contextualize the available evidence on the impact of microfinance. Microfinance and the broader field of financial inclusion have changed considerably since then.
In this latest paper, author Katheleen Odell finds the research shows overall positive impacts of microloans (repeatedly) and savings programs and notes the early promising signs from mobile payment systems and insurance. Equally important, she calls for research to catch up to the new realities of financial inclusion programs, which increasingly offer bundled services instead of the single solutions researchers typically focus on.
You can read her blog about the new paper at NextBillion and also take our poll on the research questions that will move us forward by 2020.