ANNOUNCEMENT: Growing confidence in social performance data
Updated 4/19/2013 - Finding reliable data on the social performance of MFIs is a perennial problem in microfinance. Although social ratings and audits do exist, they are far less common than their financial counterparts: of nearly 1,000 MFIs reporting social performance data to MIX Market to date, only twelve percent have submitted a social rating. Furthermore, even when such documents exist, they are not available on an annual basis. This means that the vast majority of social data on MFI activities is self-reported and, hence, open to criticism regarding its trustworthiness.
In order to meet industry demand for reliable social data, we have been working with investors and the Social Performance Task Force to find ways of increasing the overall level of confidence in the publicly available social performance data on MIX Market. Our Social Performance Document Validation methodology piloted last year and refined this year, is the result of these efforts. Thanks to this process, MFIs, funders, networks, and researchers alike will have access to more reliable social performance data upon which to base their analyses and business decisions.
The process itself is simple: when an MFI reports social data, we also ask that it submit corroborating evidence for this data in the form of policy documents, MIS reports, and/or third-party certifications. MIX’s team of SP analysts, along with certain partner organizations, then review these documents and confirm that they correspond to the data reported by the MFI. Once this review is complete, a summary of validated data points is attached to the MFI’s MIX Market profile, along with details on the types of documents used for validation.
Over the next few months MIX will launch a new analytical feature that will allow users to search for MFIs with validated social data and filter out those lacking such data. The upshot is that MIX’s users can now have more confidence in, and benefit to an even greater degree from the breadth, depth, and quality of the social performance data available on MIX.
Learn more about our validation methodology in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Russian.
