Issue 10 of the MicroBanking Bulletin, Trend Lines, is now available for download!

The tenth edition of the MicroBanking Bulletin marks the beginning of a new era for our publication. Thanks to the continuing contributions of a number of organizations to our data set and the re-organization of our data management systems, we are now able to incorporate trend analysis into our industry benchmarks.

With the cooperation of the 60 contributing MFIs in this edition, we were able to organize and clean data from 1999 to 2002 according to the latest industry standards while also investing in the automation of our data processing systems. While both procedures took longer than we ever thought they would, we are happy to report that the new data set, Trend Lines, is now available as an important tool that we will be able to regularly update.

The revolution is not so much in what we are now able to do with the data, however, as how all of us in the community of microfinance practitioners, investors and analysts will be able to use the data; and that is to help us understand the trends relative to the important questions of our day. How long does it take a new MFI to get to financial self-sufficiency? Do we see economies of scale occurring as MFIs grow? What happens to the composition of an MFI’s client base as it ages or its services mature? We believe that Trend Lines will be an important tool in exploring these questions and we hope you do too.

To download www.mixmbb.org (tables are available in English, French and Spanish)