Microfinance: Field Version

Finally! All the way down the supply chain – if you want to call it that – to the clients. Yesterday found most of the Mexico IRP team piled into our tall awkward gringo van at an early hour, en route to Puebla, to visit yet another MFI. To learn about their work in general [...]

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Scale, profits & serving the poor: Microfinance makes it big in Mexico

Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico What happens when you take a microfinance NGO, scale it up, make a profit, and issue an IPO? What if your IPO is oversubscribed by 13 times, and your MFI is suddenly worth $1.6 billion? And then the acknowledged founder of microfinance, Muhammed Yunus – who was awarded the Nobel Peace [...]

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Making change, making meetings

Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico Meetings by day and meetings by night – such has been the Mexico team’s Modus Operandi for the last several days. We’ve met with ProDesarrollo – a microfinance trade association of Mexican Sofomes (small, informal Microfinance Institutions (MFIs)) and Cajas (larger, regulated MFIs acting as credit unions), to discuss financial education, [...]

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En route, at last

Baltimore Airport Finally, after a week of exams and finishing things up – as well as plenty of celebrating the end of exams and finishing things up – the 120-strong, Global MBAs of 2011 are off on our residency trips. Facebook has been flooded with departure announcements, and posted itineraries, and by Sunday – two [...]

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