Women's World Banking (WWB) provides support, advice, training and information to a global network of 40 microfinance institutions and banks that offer credit and other financial services to 20 million low-income people — primarily women — in 28 countries worldwide.

The wide array of carefully targeted, professional services that WWB provides to strengthen its member organizations is unique in the world. Also unique are the personal relationships and guidance that WWB offers to small, grassroots organizations and women's groups as they grow to become successful, financial entities committed to serving the poor, especially women. WWB is a pioneer in setting performance standards in the microfinance industry. The organizations in our network are held to a high standard of performance, encouraging them to excel, to grow and to embrace innovation. Seventy percent of our network members rank among the top three MFIs in their countries, and 74 percent of their clients are women. Currently, WWB network members are growing their financial resources (and hence their customer base) at a rate of 30 percent per year, and have an outstanding loan portfolio of over $4 billion.

Our global presence allows us to share best practices across regions and increase the speed of learning across the globe. WWB helps create new ways of banking for the poor, as the microfinance field matures and clients require a greater variety of products and services. We also act as a catalyst to mobilize major banks to enter the microfinance market in profitable and responsible ways.

Why Microfinance and Women?

The initial motivation for microfinance roughly 30 years ago was, to a great extent, gender neutral. The pioneering microfinance institutions (MFIs) sought to provide credit to poor entrepreneurs who had no assets to pledge as collateral and, consequently, were denied access to capital by the formal banking sector. It quickly emerged, however, that women entrepreneurs invested the profits from their businesses in ways that would have a longer-lasting, more profound impact on the lives of their families and communities. The woman entrepreneur as the gateway to household security became a fundamental premise of the microfinance business model and the success of microfinance as a poverty alleviation tool.

The microfinance industry has recently moved into the commercial mainstream, reducing its reliance on subsidized donor funding. This commercialization has decidedly shifted the focus of MFIs away from low-income populations in general and poor women in particular. While this trend is worrying, WWB believes its effects can be significantly mitigated by another important development: the movement by MFIs away from a strictly credit-led approach toward providing a broad array of financial products and services, including savings and insurance.

The key to success for the MFIs of the future will be offering financial products and services that are designed to meet clients’ needs, motivations and desires. WWB’s research confirms that the key economic priorities for poor women—to a far greater extent than for men—continue to be health care, the education of their children, and housing. All MFI clients, but particularly women, seek a safe place to save the assets they have created and the means to protect them from catastrophic loss.