FINCA International
Encyclopedia
The Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA International) is a non-profit, microfinance
organization, founded by John Hatch
in 1984. Sometimes referred to as the "World Bank
for the Poor" and a "poverty vaccine for the planet", FINCA is the innovator of the village banking
methodology in microcredit
and is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern day microfinance. With its headquarters in Washington, D.C., FINCA has 21 affiliated host-country institutions (affiliates), in Latin America
, the Caribbean
, Africa
, Eastern Europe
, the Caucasus
and Central Asia
. Along with Grameen Bank
and Accion International
, FINCA is considered to be one of the most influential microfinance organizations in the world.
, Hatch was en route to a consultant assignment in Bolivia
, when inspiration struck. He grabbed in-flight cocktail napkins, scraps of paper, and a pen and began writing down ideas, equations, and flow charts as fast as he could. By the time he landed in La Paz
, he had the outline of a radically different approach to poverty alleviation: a financial services program that put the poor in charge. “Give poor communities the opportunity, and then get out of the way!” he said. He called the idea "village banking". This approach gave the poor the opportunity to obtain loans without collateral
-the poor's main obstacle to accessing credit—at market-level interest rates.
Hatch first had to convince a group of USAID officers that his epiphany would pay off—for the rural poor and the government of the United States, whose grant dollars would fund the first projects. Remarkably, the officials liked his innovative idea and provided an initial grant of $1 million. Hatch and his Peruvian business partner, Aquiles Lanoa, launched the program in five separate geographical areas of Bolivia and within four weeks, they had created funds in 280 villages serving 14,000 families with loans worth $630,000. Hatch's clients in Bolivia were puzzled at first by village banking because it represented a significant departure from business as usual. They were intrigued enough to try it, however, and it was an immediate success. When Hatch's client in Bolivia changed its in-country team, the new representatives shut the program down. More cautious than the original client team, the new group acknowledged the program's success but still felt that uncollateralized
lending to very poor people was too risky. Undeterred, Hatch spent the next few months training others in the village banking methodology, helping open new programs throughout Latin America, and building the institution that would come to be known as FINCA International. FINCA incorporated in 1985.
Its ability to achieve financial sustainability allowed FINCA to make considerable expansions in the 1980s and 1990s in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Newly Independent States of the Former Soviet Union. In 1995, FINCA entered the former Soviet Union by establishing a Village Banking program in Kyrgyzstan. In 1997, FINCA co-sponsored the first Microcredit Summit, with over 2,000 policymakers, practitioners, and donors discussing ways to expand microcredit programs. In 2000, FINCA became one of the first economic development organizations to enter Kosovo after the June 1999 cease-fire. In the 2000s, FINCA continued its penetration into the Newly Independent States by establishing new programs in Central Asia. Its most recent programs were launched in Afghanistan
, in 2004 (see FINCA Afghanistan
), and Jordan in 2007. In April 2009, FINCA Kyrgyzstan
became the second program to pass the 100,000 client mark.
The premise of its mission is to have a systematic and generational impact on poverty by making business loans available to poor women on a massive scale. According to Rupert Scofield, FINCA's President and CEO, "women have historically proved to be better credit risks, as they tend to be more responsible, perhaps from having to take care of the children. And frankly, they tend to be more creative and risk-taking than the men. Because they manage the household money, they know where the returns are in the marketplace on any given day."
In the microfinance industry, FINCA is known for reaching the very poorest market segments, particularly women. As of December 2008, women comprised 70 percent of its small loan clients.
is arguably the world’s most widely-imitated microfinance methodology. Among US-based non-profit agencies alone there are at least 31 microfinance institutions (MFIs) that have collectively created over 400 village banking programs in at least 90 countries. And in many of these countries there are host-country MFIs—sometimes dozens—that are village banking practitioners as well.
A village bank is an informal self-help support group of 15-30 members, predominantly female heads-of-household. If the program is “on mission”, in a normal village bank about 50% of all new members entering the program will be severely poor—representing families with a daily per-capita expenditure (DPCE) of less than US$1; the rest are moderately poor (DPCE=$1–2/day) or non-poor (DPCE >$2). These women meet once a week to avail themselves of working capital loans, a safe place to save, skill training, mentoring, and motivation. Loans can be as small as $50–$100 and are linked to savings such that the more a client saves the more she can borrow. The normal loan period is four months and is repaid in 16 weekly installments.
As with many other microcredit methodologies, village banking eliminates collateral (the poor man's obstacle to receiving commercial bank loans) as a loan prerequisite. Instead, it relies on on a system of cross-guarantees, where each member of a village bank ensures the loan of every other member. This system gives rise to an atmosphere of social pressure within the village bank, where the cost of social embarrassment motivates bank members to repay their loans in full. The admixture of cross-guarantees and social pressure makes it possible for even the poorest people to receive loans. This method has proven very effective for FINCA, yielding a repayment rate of over 97% in its worldwide network.
Market interest rates apply to village bank loans, usually matching what local commercial banks charge their customers but usually only a tiny fraction of the usurious
rates charged by local moneylenders. The capital for these loans is provided by FINCA with on-time weekly installment repayments collectively guaranteed by all members—i.e., a shortfall by one member must be covered by other group members. Village banks are highly democratic, self-managed, grassroots organizations. They elect their own leaders, select their own members, create their own bylaws, do their own bookkeeping, manage all funds, disburse and deposit all funds, resolve loan delinquency problems, and levy their own fines on members who come late, miss meetings, or fall behind in their payments.
Worldwide FINCA’s 21 affiliates have about 7,000 staff, of which the majority are field staff (credit officers and supervisors), and may include some of the better-educated children of FINCA clients. Each credit officer (CO) attends the weekly meeting of each of her 10-15 village banks to coach its leadership committee and monitor the bank’s activities. In addition to motivation and adult education, the CO supervises client attendance, monitors bookkeeping accuracy, checks the accuracy of the current week’s loan and savings collections, and checks when the deposit receipt of the previous meeting. In turn, each village bank is managed by its elected officers—a president (who leads the bank’s democratic decision-making process), secretary (who takes attendance and keeps minutes) and a treasurer (responsible for accurately handling all cash transactions). Finally, each village banker has her own passbook, and her recorded balances of loan payments and savings deposits must always be the same as those recorded in the treasurer’s record for each client.
Then as the program continues to grow it starts to decentralize its operations by creating offices (usually located in the largest market towns) to serve different regions. At the field level each credit officer is expected to grow her own coverage sub-region containing 10-15 village banks. This coverage region should be delimited by a frontier which, from its center, does not exceed one hour’s travel in any direction. Within this coverage area the credit officer organizes village banks along specific “routes”—each route corresponding to a different day of the week—and schedules village bank meeting days and times so she can attend several (2-4) meetings each day on the same route.
FINCA International, which is a nonprofit organization, will retain majority ownership of these transformed institutions, to ensure that the banks remain focused on FINCA’s mission to serve the world’s poor. Already, several of FINCA’s programs have successfully transformed into microbanks, including Ecuador, Uganda, and Kyrgyzstan.
from FINCA International’s Village Bank Capital Fund (VBCF). Today some 20% of FINCA’s global lending is financed by borrowed capital from host-country commercial banks.
to provide life insurance, to ensure that the death of a village bank member does not result in hardship for the other village bank members or the family of the deceased as the client's loan is paid off. Generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is making it possible for FINCA and the Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs to provide HIV/AIDS prevention education by using FINCA Malawi's established network of village bank groups.
In the Newly Independent States (countries of the former USSR), FINCA's product offerings have expanded to include larger, individual loans, collateralized by office or specialized equipment, vehicles, or property.
Three of FINCA's most successful programs, Ecuador, Uganda, and Kyrgyzstan have transformed into regulated deposit-taking institutions (MDIs). MDIs can accept savings from the public and then lend those savings to fuel much faster program outreach.
On January 24, 2004, USAID, FINCA and Visa International launched a major public-private partnership that aims to bring new efficiency and security to microfinance clients in the developing world utilizing electronic payment products. The partnership has tested how Visa solutions can provide FINCA and its clients both cost- and time-saving processes, allowing FINCA to expand its outreach to more of the world's poor by minimizing loan transaction times for both clients and microfinance providers; lowering transaction costs for processing loans; providing microfinance clients more secure access to their loan capital; reducing the possibility of cash theft; expanding the variety of financial service products available to FINCA's clients; and introducing a new market segment to participating commercial banks.
In November 2006, FINCA Afghanistan
received a $10 million grant from USAID as part of an $80 million rural microfinance project to promote development and stability in Afghanistan. The project, the Agriculture, Rural Investment and Enterprise Strengthening (ARIES) Program, will also complement USAID's existing Alternative Livelihoods Program
and will help establish a market-based, wholesale Rural Investment Fund to provide financing to cooperative
s, farmers' associations, and small and midsize enterprises throughout the country, in a push to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppies
.
Since establishing its program in Afghanistan, FINCA has offered a line of sharia
-compliant microfinance products, developed after careful vetting with local religious leaders, and confirmed through a fatwa
acquired from Al-Azhar University
in Cairo
, Egypt
(the world’s most respected Islamic institution of higher learning). Its current line of murabaha
loan products is based on an agreement where the seller (FINCA) expressly mentions the cost he has incurred on the commodities to be sold and sells it to another person (the client) by adding a markup on the original cost, which is known to the buyer. It is one of the most popular modes of exchange used by banks in Islamic countries, such as Afghanistan, to promote interest-free transactions (interest being forbidden by Islamic law
. Aside from being Afghanistan’s first sharia-compliant microfinance organization, FINCA Afghanistan can perhaps claim to have created the world’s first murabaha group-lending products.
In May 2009, FINCA, in partnership with HSBC
, launched an innovative, prepaid card in Mexico. As part of that initiative, FINCA has presented two case studies on the development and implemention of new products, strategies, technologies, and other innovations in the provision of financial services for microfinance clients in the developing world.
International film actress Natalie Portman
joined FINCA as its "Ambassador of Hope" in 2003, following a meeting with Queen Rania. About the meeting, she explains, "Because I'm Israeli and Queen Rania is probably the most high-profile Palestinian woman in the world, I had this dream of meeting with her and doing something that would promote peace and working together between Israel
i and Palestinian
women. She talked to me a lot about what she calls the 'hope gap' that exists between the one third of the world that has and the two thirds that do not. I wasn't even aware that two thirds of the world population are extremely poor, living on less than a dollar a day, and that 70 percent of those people are women and children. It's not something they teach you in school in the States". Since then, Portman has visited FINCA field projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Uganda, and Ecuador, and met with several members of Congress to argue for more government funding for microfinance ventures.
Portman appeared in the documentary "FINCA Mexico: Stories of Hope", chronicling her visit to the FINCA program in Mexico. The film was directed by Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winner documentary director Juan Carlos Rulfo. Portman created the film to provide FINCA supporters a more in-depth view of the program and to showcase the lives of FINCA clients.
Of her trip to Uganda, Portman recalls, "...in Uganda I met a woman named Efuwa who was one of the first clients of FINCA in Uganda 11 years ago and she—when she started she had 10 children. Her husband was beating her, she was on 80-cents a day and she was—she was telling us how she would borrow dirty laundry water from her neighbors to—to clean her clothes because—and her children’s clothes because she couldn’t even afford a little bit of soap. Now 11 years later, she’s opened up a restaurant. Her loans are up to $2,000 now because she’s been such a--you know reliable client. She hired seven other women. She sends all of her daughters to school. One of them is in University now; they like all pooled their money together to—to send the smartest one to University and it’s just amazing the—the amount of responsibility and pride that these women who have no education and virtually no hope can take with themselves with just a little bit of input."
for seven consecutive years, they presently receive a two-star rating.
FINCA has also earned a grade "A" rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy
(AIP), a prominent American charity watchdog service whose purpose is to help donors make informed giving decisions.
In December 2001, FINCA was selected from among more than 800,000 U.S. nonprofits for inclusion in Worth Magazine
's "Top 100 Charities" – nominated by its own donors. The magazine’s cover story, "A Gift for Giving," recommended charities distinguished by their mission impact, financial controls and sound management.
Microfinance
Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services....
organization, founded by John Hatch
John Hatch
Dr. John Keith Hatch is an American economic development expert and a pioneer in modern day microfinance. He is the founder of FINCA International and the Rural Development Services , and is famous for innovating village banking, arguably the world’s most widely-imitated microfinance...
in 1984. Sometimes referred to as the "World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
for the Poor" and a "poverty vaccine for the planet", FINCA is the innovator of the village banking
Village Banking
Village Banking is a microcredit methodology where-by financial services are administered locally rather than centralized in a formal bank. Village banking has its roots in ancient cultures and was most recently adopted for use by micro-finance institutions as a way to control costs...
methodology in microcredit
Microcredit
Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
and is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern day microfinance. With its headquarters in Washington, D.C., FINCA has 21 affiliated host-country institutions (affiliates), in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
and Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
. Along with Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank
The Grameen Bank is a microfinance organization and community development bank started in Bangladesh that makes small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral...
and Accion International
Accion International
ACCION International is a nonprofit organization that supports microfinance institutions in their work to provide financial services to low-income clients. ACCION provides management services, technical assistance, debt and equity investment and training to microfinance institutions and...
, FINCA is considered to be one of the most influential microfinance organizations in the world.
Background and history
In 1984, Hatch, a Fulbright-trained economist and international development expert, conceived a new method for delivering assistance to the poor. In an airplane high above the AndesAndes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
, Hatch was en route to a consultant assignment in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, when inspiration struck. He grabbed in-flight cocktail napkins, scraps of paper, and a pen and began writing down ideas, equations, and flow charts as fast as he could. By the time he landed in La Paz
La Paz
Nuestra Señora de La Paz is the administrative capital of Bolivia, as well as the departmental capital of the La Paz Department, and the second largest city in the country after Santa Cruz de la Sierra...
, he had the outline of a radically different approach to poverty alleviation: a financial services program that put the poor in charge. “Give poor communities the opportunity, and then get out of the way!” he said. He called the idea "village banking". This approach gave the poor the opportunity to obtain loans without collateral
Collateral (finance)
In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower's default - that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation...
-the poor's main obstacle to accessing credit—at market-level interest rates.
Hatch first had to convince a group of USAID officers that his epiphany would pay off—for the rural poor and the government of the United States, whose grant dollars would fund the first projects. Remarkably, the officials liked his innovative idea and provided an initial grant of $1 million. Hatch and his Peruvian business partner, Aquiles Lanoa, launched the program in five separate geographical areas of Bolivia and within four weeks, they had created funds in 280 villages serving 14,000 families with loans worth $630,000. Hatch's clients in Bolivia were puzzled at first by village banking because it represented a significant departure from business as usual. They were intrigued enough to try it, however, and it was an immediate success. When Hatch's client in Bolivia changed its in-country team, the new representatives shut the program down. More cautious than the original client team, the new group acknowledged the program's success but still felt that uncollateralized
Collateral (finance)
In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower's default - that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation...
lending to very poor people was too risky. Undeterred, Hatch spent the next few months training others in the village banking methodology, helping open new programs throughout Latin America, and building the institution that would come to be known as FINCA International. FINCA incorporated in 1985.
Its ability to achieve financial sustainability allowed FINCA to make considerable expansions in the 1980s and 1990s in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Newly Independent States of the Former Soviet Union. In 1995, FINCA entered the former Soviet Union by establishing a Village Banking program in Kyrgyzstan. In 1997, FINCA co-sponsored the first Microcredit Summit, with over 2,000 policymakers, practitioners, and donors discussing ways to expand microcredit programs. In 2000, FINCA became one of the first economic development organizations to enter Kosovo after the June 1999 cease-fire. In the 2000s, FINCA continued its penetration into the Newly Independent States by establishing new programs in Central Asia. Its most recent programs were launched in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, in 2004 (see FINCA Afghanistan
FINCA Afghanistan
FINCA Afghanistan is a nonprofit microfinance organization and an affiliate of FINCA International. Its headquarters is based in Kabul, Afghanistan.-Background and history:...
), and Jordan in 2007. In April 2009, FINCA Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...
became the second program to pass the 100,000 client mark.
Mission and focus on women
The mission of FINCA International is to provide "financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets, and improve their standard of living". Today, FINCA's mission reaches out to over 740,000 clients worldwide. In an ambitious push forward, it aims to expand its outreach to over one million clients by the end of 2010.The premise of its mission is to have a systematic and generational impact on poverty by making business loans available to poor women on a massive scale. According to Rupert Scofield, FINCA's President and CEO, "women have historically proved to be better credit risks, as they tend to be more responsible, perhaps from having to take care of the children. And frankly, they tend to be more creative and risk-taking than the men. Because they manage the household money, they know where the returns are in the marketplace on any given day."
In the microfinance industry, FINCA is known for reaching the very poorest market segments, particularly women. As of December 2008, women comprised 70 percent of its small loan clients.
Village Banking
Pioneered by FINCA, village bankingVillage Banking
Village Banking is a microcredit methodology where-by financial services are administered locally rather than centralized in a formal bank. Village banking has its roots in ancient cultures and was most recently adopted for use by micro-finance institutions as a way to control costs...
is arguably the world’s most widely-imitated microfinance methodology. Among US-based non-profit agencies alone there are at least 31 microfinance institutions (MFIs) that have collectively created over 400 village banking programs in at least 90 countries. And in many of these countries there are host-country MFIs—sometimes dozens—that are village banking practitioners as well.
A village bank is an informal self-help support group of 15-30 members, predominantly female heads-of-household. If the program is “on mission”, in a normal village bank about 50% of all new members entering the program will be severely poor—representing families with a daily per-capita expenditure (DPCE) of less than US$1; the rest are moderately poor (DPCE=$1–2/day) or non-poor (DPCE >$2). These women meet once a week to avail themselves of working capital loans, a safe place to save, skill training, mentoring, and motivation. Loans can be as small as $50–$100 and are linked to savings such that the more a client saves the more she can borrow. The normal loan period is four months and is repaid in 16 weekly installments.
As with many other microcredit methodologies, village banking eliminates collateral (the poor man's obstacle to receiving commercial bank loans) as a loan prerequisite. Instead, it relies on on a system of cross-guarantees, where each member of a village bank ensures the loan of every other member. This system gives rise to an atmosphere of social pressure within the village bank, where the cost of social embarrassment motivates bank members to repay their loans in full. The admixture of cross-guarantees and social pressure makes it possible for even the poorest people to receive loans. This method has proven very effective for FINCA, yielding a repayment rate of over 97% in its worldwide network.
Market interest rates apply to village bank loans, usually matching what local commercial banks charge their customers but usually only a tiny fraction of the usurious
Usury
Usury Originally, when the charging of interest was still banned by Christian churches, usury simply meant the charging of interest at any rate . In countries where the charging of interest became acceptable, the term came to be used for interest above the rate allowed by law...
rates charged by local moneylenders. The capital for these loans is provided by FINCA with on-time weekly installment repayments collectively guaranteed by all members—i.e., a shortfall by one member must be covered by other group members. Village banks are highly democratic, self-managed, grassroots organizations. They elect their own leaders, select their own members, create their own bylaws, do their own bookkeeping, manage all funds, disburse and deposit all funds, resolve loan delinquency problems, and levy their own fines on members who come late, miss meetings, or fall behind in their payments.
Worldwide FINCA’s 21 affiliates have about 7,000 staff, of which the majority are field staff (credit officers and supervisors), and may include some of the better-educated children of FINCA clients. Each credit officer (CO) attends the weekly meeting of each of her 10-15 village banks to coach its leadership committee and monitor the bank’s activities. In addition to motivation and adult education, the CO supervises client attendance, monitors bookkeeping accuracy, checks the accuracy of the current week’s loan and savings collections, and checks when the deposit receipt of the previous meeting. In turn, each village bank is managed by its elected officers—a president (who leads the bank’s democratic decision-making process), secretary (who takes attendance and keeps minutes) and a treasurer (responsible for accurately handling all cash transactions). Finally, each village banker has her own passbook, and her recorded balances of loan payments and savings deposits must always be the same as those recorded in the treasurer’s record for each client.
How FINCA programs grow
A FINCA program begins in the city center, then in a widening ink-blot fashion expands into the peri-urban communities that surround the city, and finally (once the program’s break-even point is reached) expands into rural areas. Normally a new program will establish a single headquarters in the capital city where both administrative and program staff are based.Then as the program continues to grow it starts to decentralize its operations by creating offices (usually located in the largest market towns) to serve different regions. At the field level each credit officer is expected to grow her own coverage sub-region containing 10-15 village banks. This coverage region should be delimited by a frontier which, from its center, does not exceed one hour’s travel in any direction. Within this coverage area the credit officer organizes village banks along specific “routes”—each route corresponding to a different day of the week—and schedules village bank meeting days and times so she can attend several (2-4) meetings each day on the same route.
Transformation of FINCA programs into microbanks
To expand its access to capital, FINCA is in the process of transforming the majority of its credit-only NGOs into licensed, regulated, micro-deposit taking institutions (i.e. “microbanks”), in order to mobilize savings from its clients. Access to client deposits will afford FINCA programs greater independence from donor and government funding, attract private investment and improve financial sector stability. This will allow FINCA to expand its outreach to a greater number of clients, and to provide them with a wider range of products and services.FINCA International, which is a nonprofit organization, will retain majority ownership of these transformed institutions, to ensure that the banks remain focused on FINCA’s mission to serve the world’s poor. Already, several of FINCA’s programs have successfully transformed into microbanks, including Ecuador, Uganda, and Kyrgyzstan.
Funding
Nearly all FINCA programs begin as nonprofit institutions rather than regulated commercial finance institutions. As such they can not legally collect the savings of their clients for financing their loan portfolio (as a conventional bank would do). Thus, FINCA usually finances its start-up programs with grants or soft loans. FINCA estimates that for a typical country program to reach its break-even point requires (1) three years, (2) a minimum of 7,000 clients, and (3) about $2 million in funding—where half is for loan capital and the other half subsidizes a declining share of its operating costs over a period of three years. Historically, FINCA has raised most of this start-up money from USAID. But in recent years, FINCA has financed an increasing share of its program start-up costs from private sector donors (corporations, foundations, and individuals). Once a FINCA program reaches break-even it can continue to grow its portfolio by re-investing its net operating surplus. It also becomes “bankable”, i.e. eligible to borrow from local commercial banks for re-lending to its clients. These loans are guaranteed by means of a dollar-denominated letter of creditLetter of credit
A standard, commercial letter of credit is a document issued mostly by a financial institution, used primarily in trade finance, which usually provides an irrevocable payment undertaking....
from FINCA International’s Village Bank Capital Fund (VBCF). Today some 20% of FINCA’s global lending is financed by borrowed capital from host-country commercial banks.
Innovations and partnerships
While the original village bank credit and savings program remains the core product in the African programs, FINCA has partnered with leading insurance companies to offer health and life insurance products, health care, and business-interruption coverage in response to the AIDS crisis occurring in Africa. FINCA Uganda, which is a world pioneer in microinsurance, has partnered with AIGAmerican International Group
American International Group, Inc. or AIG is an American multinational insurance corporation. Its corporate headquarters is located in the American International Building in New York City. The British headquarters office is on Fenchurch Street in London, continental Europe operations are based in...
to provide life insurance, to ensure that the death of a village bank member does not result in hardship for the other village bank members or the family of the deceased as the client's loan is paid off. Generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is making it possible for FINCA and the Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs to provide HIV/AIDS prevention education by using FINCA Malawi's established network of village bank groups.
In the Newly Independent States (countries of the former USSR), FINCA's product offerings have expanded to include larger, individual loans, collateralized by office or specialized equipment, vehicles, or property.
Three of FINCA's most successful programs, Ecuador, Uganda, and Kyrgyzstan have transformed into regulated deposit-taking institutions (MDIs). MDIs can accept savings from the public and then lend those savings to fuel much faster program outreach.
On January 24, 2004, USAID, FINCA and Visa International launched a major public-private partnership that aims to bring new efficiency and security to microfinance clients in the developing world utilizing electronic payment products. The partnership has tested how Visa solutions can provide FINCA and its clients both cost- and time-saving processes, allowing FINCA to expand its outreach to more of the world's poor by minimizing loan transaction times for both clients and microfinance providers; lowering transaction costs for processing loans; providing microfinance clients more secure access to their loan capital; reducing the possibility of cash theft; expanding the variety of financial service products available to FINCA's clients; and introducing a new market segment to participating commercial banks.
In November 2006, FINCA Afghanistan
FINCA Afghanistan
FINCA Afghanistan is a nonprofit microfinance organization and an affiliate of FINCA International. Its headquarters is based in Kabul, Afghanistan.-Background and history:...
received a $10 million grant from USAID as part of an $80 million rural microfinance project to promote development and stability in Afghanistan. The project, the Agriculture, Rural Investment and Enterprise Strengthening (ARIES) Program, will also complement USAID's existing Alternative Livelihoods Program
Alternative Livelihood
Alternative Livelihood Programs are the name given to government attempts, especially in South America to replace the illicit cultivation of banned substances, such as opium or coca, with alternative, legal crops or other activities as a source of income....
and will help establish a market-based, wholesale Rural Investment Fund to provide financing to cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
s, farmers' associations, and small and midsize enterprises throughout the country, in a push to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppies
Opium poppy
Opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the species of plant from which opium and poppy seeds are extracted. Opium is the source of many opiates, including morphine , thebaine, codeine, papaverine, and noscapine...
.
Since establishing its program in Afghanistan, FINCA has offered a line of sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
-compliant microfinance products, developed after careful vetting with local religious leaders, and confirmed through a fatwa
Fatwa
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar. In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar. The person who issues a fatwā...
acquired from Al-Azhar University
Al-Azhar University
Al-Azhar University is an educational institute in Cairo, Egypt. Founded in 970~972 as a madrasa, it is the chief centre of Arabic literature and Islamic learning in the world. It is the oldest degree-granting university in Egypt. In 1961 non-religious subjects were added to its curriculum.It is...
in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
(the world’s most respected Islamic institution of higher learning). Its current line of murabaha
Murabaha
Murabahah or murabaha is a particular kind of sale, compliant with shariah, where the seller expressly mentions the cost he has incurred on the commodities for sale and sells it to another person by adding some profit or mark-up thereon which is known to the buyer...
loan products is based on an agreement where the seller (FINCA) expressly mentions the cost he has incurred on the commodities to be sold and sells it to another person (the client) by adding a markup on the original cost, which is known to the buyer. It is one of the most popular modes of exchange used by banks in Islamic countries, such as Afghanistan, to promote interest-free transactions (interest being forbidden by Islamic law
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
. Aside from being Afghanistan’s first sharia-compliant microfinance organization, FINCA Afghanistan can perhaps claim to have created the world’s first murabaha group-lending products.
In May 2009, FINCA, in partnership with HSBC
HSBC
HSBC Holdings plc is a global banking and financial services company headquartered in Canary Wharf, London, United Kingdom. it is the world's second-largest banking and financial services group and second-largest public company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine...
, launched an innovative, prepaid card in Mexico. As part of that initiative, FINCA has presented two case studies on the development and implemention of new products, strategies, technologies, and other innovations in the provision of financial services for microfinance clients in the developing world.
Celebrity support
In 2003, Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan accepted an invitation from FINCA International to join its board of directors, formalizing a relationship of support and advocacy that began in 2000. In accepting the invitation, the Queen reaffirmed her belief in FINCA's vision that microfinance institutions offer a tangible means of providing large numbers of the world's poorest a real stake in their societies. On February 25, 2008, Queen Rania officially inaugurated the FINCA Jordan program and personally visited its clients.International film actress Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman
Natalie Hershlag , better known by her stage name Natalie Portman, is an actress with dual American and Israeli citizenship. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film Léon, but major success came when she was cast as Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars prequel...
joined FINCA as its "Ambassador of Hope" in 2003, following a meeting with Queen Rania. About the meeting, she explains, "Because I'm Israeli and Queen Rania is probably the most high-profile Palestinian woman in the world, I had this dream of meeting with her and doing something that would promote peace and working together between Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i and Palestinian
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
women. She talked to me a lot about what she calls the 'hope gap' that exists between the one third of the world that has and the two thirds that do not. I wasn't even aware that two thirds of the world population are extremely poor, living on less than a dollar a day, and that 70 percent of those people are women and children. It's not something they teach you in school in the States". Since then, Portman has visited FINCA field projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Uganda, and Ecuador, and met with several members of Congress to argue for more government funding for microfinance ventures.
Portman appeared in the documentary "FINCA Mexico: Stories of Hope", chronicling her visit to the FINCA program in Mexico. The film was directed by Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winner documentary director Juan Carlos Rulfo. Portman created the film to provide FINCA supporters a more in-depth view of the program and to showcase the lives of FINCA clients.
Of her trip to Uganda, Portman recalls, "...in Uganda I met a woman named Efuwa who was one of the first clients of FINCA in Uganda 11 years ago and she—when she started she had 10 children. Her husband was beating her, she was on 80-cents a day and she was—she was telling us how she would borrow dirty laundry water from her neighbors to—to clean her clothes because—and her children’s clothes because she couldn’t even afford a little bit of soap. Now 11 years later, she’s opened up a restaurant. Her loans are up to $2,000 now because she’s been such a--you know reliable client. She hired seven other women. She sends all of her daughters to school. One of them is in University now; they like all pooled their money together to—to send the smartest one to University and it’s just amazing the—the amount of responsibility and pride that these women who have no education and virtually no hope can take with themselves with just a little bit of input."
Philanthropic accolades
Although FINCA had received a four-star rating from Charity NavigatorCharity Navigator
Charity Navigator is an independent, non-profit organization that evaluates American charities. Its stated goal is "to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace by evaluating the financial health of America's largest charities."-About:...
for seven consecutive years, they presently receive a two-star rating.
FINCA has also earned a grade "A" rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy
American Institute of Philanthropy
The American Institute of Philanthropy is a 501 nonprofit organization, created in the United States by Daniel Borochoff in 1992, to provide information about charities' financial efficiency, accountability, governance, and fundraising. Its official website is known as...
(AIP), a prominent American charity watchdog service whose purpose is to help donors make informed giving decisions.
In December 2001, FINCA was selected from among more than 800,000 U.S. nonprofits for inclusion in Worth Magazine
Worth (magazine)
Worth is an American wealth management magazine for high net worth individuals. It is published on a bi-monthly basis and circulated to over 110,000 recipients.-History:Worth was founded in 1992 as a wealth management magazine for high net worth individuals...
's "Top 100 Charities" – nominated by its own donors. The magazine’s cover story, "A Gift for Giving," recommended charities distinguished by their mission impact, financial controls and sound management.
Countries where FINCA operates
- Latin America and the Caribbean: EcuadorEcuadorEcuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
(Founded in 1994), El SalvadorEl SalvadorEl Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
(Founded in 1990), GuatemalaGuatemalaGuatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
(Founded in 1998), HaitiHaitiHaiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
(Founded in 1989), HondurasHondurasHonduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...
(Founded in 1989), MexicoMexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
(Founded in 1989), NicaraguaNicaraguaNicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
(Founded in 1992) - Newly Independent States (Eurasia) : ArmeniaArmeniaArmenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
(Founded in 1999), AzerbaijanAzerbaijanAzerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
(Founded in 1998), GeorgiaGeorgia (country)Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
(Founded in 1998), KosovoKosovoKosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...
(Founded in 2000), KyrgyzstanKyrgyzstanKyrgyzstan , officially the Kyrgyz Republic is one of the world's six independent Turkic states . Located in Central Asia, landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east...
(Founded in 1995), RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
(Founded in 1999), TajikistanTajikistanTajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....
(Founded in 2003) - Africa: DR Congo (Founded in 2003), MalawiMalawiThe Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size...
(Founded in 1994), TanzaniaTanzaniaThe United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
(Founded in 1998), UgandaUgandaUganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
(Founded in 1992), ZambiaZambiaZambia , officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west....
(Founded in 2001) - Middle East: AfghanistanAfghanistanAfghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
(Founded in 2003), JordanJordanJordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
(Founded in 2007) - FINCA also maintains an administrative presence in UkraineUkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
See also
- FINCA AfghanistanFINCA AfghanistanFINCA Afghanistan is a nonprofit microfinance organization and an affiliate of FINCA International. Its headquarters is based in Kabul, Afghanistan.-Background and history:...
- FINCA Uganda LimitedFINCA Uganda LimitedFINCA Uganda Limited, also known as FINCA Uganda, is a Microfinance Deposit-taking Institution in Uganda. It is a subsidiary and member organization of FINCA International, headquartered in the United States of America.-Location:...
- John HatchJohn HatchDr. John Keith Hatch is an American economic development expert and a pioneer in modern day microfinance. He is the founder of FINCA International and the Rural Development Services , and is famous for innovating village banking, arguably the world’s most widely-imitated microfinance...
- Village BankingVillage BankingVillage Banking is a microcredit methodology where-by financial services are administered locally rather than centralized in a formal bank. Village banking has its roots in ancient cultures and was most recently adopted for use by micro-finance institutions as a way to control costs...
- FINCA AfghanistanFINCA AfghanistanFINCA Afghanistan is a nonprofit microfinance organization and an affiliate of FINCA International. Its headquarters is based in Kabul, Afghanistan.-Background and history:...
- MicrocreditMicrocreditMicrocredit is the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit...
- MicrofinanceMicrofinanceMicrofinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services....
- Opportunity InternationalOpportunity InternationalOpportunity International is an organization that provides small business loans, savings, insurance and training to more than two million people working their way out of poverty in the developing world...
External links
- FINCA's Official Website
- Natalie Portman's video interview regarding FINCA on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos", April 29, 2007
- Natalie Portman's video interview regarding FINCA on ABC's "The View", May 1, 2007
- Natalie Portman's interview regarding her involvement with FINCA and The Village Banking Campaign on MSNBC, August 18, 2009