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Time Magazine Online Features WWB's Report on Transformation

Time Magazine featured WWB's working paper, "Stemming the Tide of Mission Drift: Microfinance and the Double Bottom Line,” on the World section of its online magazine. The Time article, titled "Microfinance: Women Being Cheated?" asks the question that initially motivated WWB to begin collecting data on microfinance institutions as they transform to regulated financial institutions: “As microfinance moves more and more into the mainstream of the banking world, is some of its original mission getting lost in the shuffle?”

WWB's paper examines the impact of the transformation process upon a control group of approximately 25 MFIs that Women’s World Banking has been tracking since 2000 and concludes that database findings reaffirm the prevailing notion that microfinance transformations tend to catalyze growth in MFI outreach and product offerings. However, another concerning trend emerged: there was a significant decline in the percentage of women clients served by formalized MFIs after transformation. Consistent with WWB’s focus on the financial needs of low-income women entrepreneurs and their families, WWB hopes that the paper will provoke discussion in the microfinance industry about ways to avert this trend so that future MFI transformations will enhance, rather than curtail, outreach to women clients. The paper, which was released Thursday, April 17, is available for download from the WWB website.

Click here to read the Time article on the time.com website.