Economic and financial profitability is a prerequisite for social, and environmental sustainability. Several risk factors endanger the Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and their precarious equilibrium, dwarfing their outreach potential towards the financially excluded. The research question analyses the impact of crowdfunding platforms on the MFIs economic and financial equilibrium, to detect if and how sustainability and outreach may be improved. This hypothesis is tested with an empirical simulation and then interpreted with innovative network theory modeling. It is shown that networked platforms and related innovations as crowdfunding, reduce transaction costs, and operational risk. Another source of savings is given by reduced cost of capital: whereas it is difficult and expensive for MFIs to raise capital (equity or debt), crowdfunding (especially if reward- or donation- based) makes it easier and cheaper. Reward, donation, or equity crowdfunding, with its flexible approach and declinations, may represent
a viable mix of complementary solutions that soften core microfinance criticalities, providing subsidized capital and cost-cutting technology. Digital platforms act as pivoting nodes within the microfinance networked ecosystem, intermediating value co-creation, and sharing among cooperative stakeholders. Digital savings improve financial inclusion, fostering microfinance outreach. The model is applicable to group lending practices that become digitized and may be extended to either individual borrowing or to peer-to-peer lending where direct connections eliminate the MFI intermediation.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348479089_DO_CROWDFUNDED_PLATFORMS_IMPROVE_SUSTAINABILITY_AND_OUTREACH_IN_MICROFINANCE_INSTITUTIONS

Microfinance is a renowned albeit controversial solution for giving financial access to the unbanked, even if micro-transactions increase costs, limiting outreach potential. Economic and financial sustainability of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) is a prerequisite for widening a potentially unlimited clients’ base. Automation decreases costs, expanding the outreach potential and improving transparency and efficiency. Technological solutions range from branchless mobile banking to geo-localization of customers, digital/social networking for group lending, blockchain validation, big data, and artificial intelligence, up to “MicroFinTech” – FinTech applications adapted to microfinance. Financial inclusion has been identified as an enabler for 7 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Cross pollination of financial intermediaries is catalysed by digital platforms that act as a bridging node among multilayer networks where traditional banks, FinTechs, and MFIs interact.

This study estimates the geographical disconnection in rural Low-Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) between First-Mile suppliers of healthcare services and end-users. This detachment is due to geographical barriers and to a shortage of technical, financial, and human resources that enable peripheral health facilities to perform effective and prompt diagnosis. End-users typically have easier access to cell-phones than hospitals, so mHealth can help to overcome such barriers, transforming inpatients/outpatients into home-patients, decongesting hospitals, especially during epidemics. This generates savings for patients and the healthcare system. The advantages of mHealth are well known, but there is a literature gap in the description of its economic returns.

This paper describes some of the main aspects of microfinance (MF) in under-developed countries, showing why it has succeeded in reaching the poor, while traditional banks have not, using innovative devices such as group lending with self-monitoring, short repayments instalments and small loans. The aim of the paper is to show how microfinance institutions (MFIs) can fill the lack of traditional banks in under-developed countries, proposing unconventional products and innovative business models. This study also investigates about possible synergies between banks and MFIs, avoiding overlaps and mission drift. It is shown that MFIs can improve their outreach using technological devices such as M-banking. Innovative questions and proposals are illustrated, so as to give an updated and synthetic picture of the state-of-the-art, which might prove useful for researchers and practitioners.

21Technical or social innovation, concerning also the creation and commercialization of new products, strategies and management, has a deep actual – and especially trendy – impact on microfinance institutions (MFIs), contributing to reshape their business model, with an impact on their overall risk profile. Innovation is mostly an opportunity even for MF risk mitigation, considering its pervasive impact on risk factors. This original analysis is addressing, in a multidisciplinary and innovative comprehensive way, apparently weakly related topics such as MF governance, and IT issues, within recessionary cycles. This hardly investigated frontier faces key trendy issues, which are likely to deeply reengineer the relationship among different stakeholders, as it has already happened, on a different and more sophisticated scale, with traditional banking. To the extent that technology (with access to Internet, social networks, cashless electronic payments, etc.) reshapes the equilibriums among different stakeholders, it is likely to have important – albeit under-investigated – corporate governance consequences, softening the conflicts of interest among stakeholders and reinforcing the business model, making it more resilient during recessions, with positive externalities on both sustainability and outreach.

The poor are typically isolated, lacking opportunities and being deprived of necessary developmental assets such as proper communication and networking. Network theories may thus act as an original starting point for interpreting issues of poverty, which can be alleviated by combining basic technology with affordable funding programs such as microcredit. Value-adding technology, levered by microfinance, may then be sequentially added to the development paradigm. To the extent that technology and microfinance can be suitably combined, they may lever scalable productivity, in a way similar to Metcalfe’s exponential upsides for networking organizations. This may happen for instance with M-banking, within a ‘digital culture’ environment, and with viral social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter, or Mobile Apps.29

La recessione economica, scatenata dalla crisi del sistema bancario e finanziario internazionale, pone nuovi interrogativi sul modo di “fare banca”, in presenza di impieghi in titoli o prestiti alla clientela che hanno evidenziato profili di rischiosità non percepiti prima della crisi e non supportati da un’adeguata patrimonializzazione. Gli investimenti in istituzioni di microfinanza nei paesi in via di sviluppo, tradizionalmente caratterizzati da rendimenti contenuti, hanno dimostrato una scarsa correlazione con i mercati internazionali, con un conseguente limitato profilo di rischio. La forte domanda di finanza etica, anche in risposta ad una generalizzata percezione di crisi di valori, apre nuove strade e mercati scarsamente esplorati, in un’economia sempre più globalizzata in cui problemi e opportunità sono – nel bene e nel male – sempre più condivisi. La microfinanza, una volta adeguatamente sviluppata, può dare un contributo duraturo e che si autoalimenta – come le fonti rinnovabili – alla soluzione della povertà, a differenza delle donazioni che svuotano le tasche dei benefattori per riempire solo temporaneamente quelle dei più bisognosi.

Traditional corporate governance models in Western countries have been severely shaken by the still ongoing recession, whereas in developing countries backward and unrefined stakeholdership models have provided an involuntary shelter from financial shocks.