Posted in Financial cooperatives, History, Microfinance, tagged Cambodia, F.W. Raiffeisen, financial intermediation, microfinance, portfolio management, rural poverty, saving, source of funds on May 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Some three decades ago the experts announced that only one source of funds could deliver microfinance services sustainably to billions of the world’s poorest people. That source was Western capital markets and the profit-maximizing investors participating in them.
When F.W. Raiffeisen launched the first microfinance revolution (1864-1945) he used a different source of funds: (more…)
Posted in Financial cooperatives, Microfinance, tagged Arusha Savings Summit, Cambodia, delinquency, financial cooperative, portfolio yields, record-keeping, village finance on May 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Field portion, village finance auditing course, Cambodia, 2007
About 8 years ago I visited a small credit cooperative in Cambodia. Its chairman was a cheerful farmer with greying hair and callouses who wore neat business clothes with a krama (a square checked Khmer cloth) flung jauntily over his shoulder. He presented a sheaf of neat hand-written financials to me, with his signature and the treasurer’s jumping boldly off the bottom.
As we visited borrowers (more…)
Posted in History, Microfinance, Orality, The village, tagged England, fraud, Muktar Mai, thumbprint, Walter Ong on May 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »
As observed by communications theorist Walter Ong, villagers in oral communities often don’t trust written text.
Ong cites a study of community decision-making from 12th century England. (Orality and Literacy, p. 95). Writing already had a long history in England, (more…)
Posted in Financial cooperatives, Microfinance, Orality, tagged Colin Smith, credit unions, loan contract, Maori, oral culture, service quality on May 3, 2011| 5 Comments »
During one of my quarterly visits to the Far North Credit Union, I was intrigued to discover the note “QF” next to several loans recorded in the cash book. I was told these were “quick fire” loans, made without any written record and no collateral, to a maximum of $50. When I asked where the idea had come from, I was told it had been given to them by New Zealand’s credit union pioneer — Colin Smith — during a training workshop.
Formal speaking is a powerful living tradition
Horrified at the idea of a loan of any size being made without a signed contract (and the subsequent default levels!) — and knowing that Colin, a chartered accountant, would never countenance such a thing — I tracked down the origins of their innovation to a presentation he had given on improving members’ experience of the loan
villagefinance 