Much of the promise of microfinance comes from the fact that people can get loans even if they do not have access to traditional physical collateral such as a house. The idea that people are trustworthy enough to repay loans even without the threat of losing their property makes for an uplifting story, but it is not always true.  Guarantors are understandably upset when someone does not repay what they owe, and often try to take something of value from the debtor – such as a gas tank – in order to pay off what they had to guarantee.

A recent article by Daniel Rozas pondered the existence of a microfinance bubble in South India. Rozas crunched the numbers and concluded that, in some areas, microfinance borrowing has overreached capacity.

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The first edition of Matthew Bishop and Michael Green’s Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World came out in 2008, just before the financial crisis hit.  It was bad timing in a way – all of a sudden it became much harder to make the case that the rich could save the world.  Some of the rich had just had

This week, the Asia Insurance Industry awarded Dr.

FAI’s Aparna Dalal is at the 5th International Microinsurance Conference in Dakar this week. She’ll have a full report, but some interesting numbers are already emerging from the conference, courtesy of the ILO’s new Landscape Study of Microinsurance in Africa.