Mibanco, Peru: Profitable Microfinance Outreach, with Lessons for Asia

This systematic analysis of the lessons learned at Mibanco–a micro-finance bank in Peru designed to provide sophisticated banking services to poor and low-income households–provides an example for microfinance banks in Asia. Mibanco’s successes, which managed to blend aid to large segments of society that badly needed financial services with profitability–are potentially very instructive for an Asian private sector that has not yet been convinced of the profitability of microfinance banks. Among the lessons highlighted for microfinance banks and economic scholars is the usefulness of balancing rural investment and aid with delivering services to urban regions.