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Introduction - Microfinance:A Platform for Social Change

Written by: Grameen Foundation

Article Overview: The phrase “Customer is King” may be an oversimplified cliché in business, but – stripped of all its bells and whistles – this phrase represents the essence of a consumer business.

Introduction - Microfinance:A Platform for Social Change

The phrase “Customer is King” may be an oversimplified cliché in business, but –
stripped of all its bells and whistles – this phrase represents the essence of a consumer business.
A business’s survival depends on serving and meeting customer needs and demands. Businesses
have to focus on their customers, their needs, their behaviors, and a multitude of other factors that
impact their lives. A successful, thriving business can no longer be an isolated business; it must
adapt to customers and the marketplace. Increasingly, businesses from differing sectors— from
technology to entertainment to retail and even to banking—are partnering with each other to cater
to the same customer base or extend their own client access. Today, people can access banking
products and services practically anywhere – post offices, online, and through mobile devices. In
addition, financial service providers offer financial education, consumer awareness, and even
training and seminars on managing personal finances as well as small businesses. Based on this
same concept, we believe that microfinance can better serve its clients by extending services to
meet their life demands.
Over the years, microfinance has demonstrated that its impact goes beyond providing
individuals with access to capital; it has also helped to protect, diversify and increase their
sources of income and assets that enable them to make their way out of poverty. It has shown
that when we provide capital to poor individuals with entrepreneurial ideas and spirit, they will
utilize that capital to generate income for themselves and their families – offering them the
potential of a life that is poverty free. To date, microfinance has touched the lives and
communities of more than 100 million families, and has helped lift many of them out of poverty
or at least put them on a pathway to a poverty-free life. However, more than three billion people
still live on less than two dollars a day; more than a billion have no access to electricity; and three
billion have no access to safe sanitation. For these individuals, microfinance is a tool that must
continue to be deployed and leveraged to its maximum potential.
Access to capital has provided people with the opportunity to climb the economic ladder.
Nonetheless, we have witnessed that simple access to capital, while paramount, is often not
enough to realize the kind of rapid poverty reduction that is needed to reach the Millennium
Development Goals. For some, capital is the missing element in their struggles against poverty.
For others, capital is overshadowed by non-financial factors that also contribute to poverty.
Therefore, to create solutions that address poverty and to enhance the existing use of
microfinance, we need to understand that poverty is a result of a multitude of factors that
encompass more than merely a limited income. According to the Chronic Poverty Research
Centre, “chronic poverty is typically characterized not only by low income and assets, but also by hunger and malnutrition, illiteracy, the lack of access to basic necessities such as safe drinking
water and health services, and social isolation and exploitation.”2
Because poverty encompasses more than just finance, microfinance—a purpose-driven
business—needs to look beyond just offering credit or banking services to the poor. To properly
serve clients’ needs and fulfill its purpose, microfinance needs to do more to address the
underlying factors of poverty than simply providing access to capital. This paper argues that
although microfinance is an effective poverty alleviation tool, it should be utilized as a platform
for multiple empowerment approaches, building on the successful models being pioneered by a
few microfinance practitioners. In other words, microfinance should leverage its position in the
field and relationships with clients to deliver other social and development services. By
integrating different approaches and models to deliver a variety of basic poverty alleviation
services to the poor, these individuals will have a greater chance of lifting themselves out of
poverty, and, more importantly, staying out of poverty.

Microfinance: A Platform for Social Change
by Marge Magner
March 2007
Grameen Foundation

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Article Tags: 100 million, banking products, bells and whistles, clich, client access, consumer awareness, consumer business, customer base, education consumer, entrepreneurial ideas, financial education, financial service providers, life demands, managing personal finances, meeting customer needs, mobile devices, poor individuals, post offices, thriving business, two dollars



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