Microfinance

by La Torre, Mario; Vento, Gianfranco A.

• ISBN13: 9781403997890
• ISBN10: 1403997896
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-03
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Mario La Torre and Gianfranco A. Vento provide a comprehensive analysis of the microfinance business, covering the risks, returns and management issues associated with such activity. The main focus of the text is in extending the risk management approach used by traditional banks to encompass microfinance. The authors put substantial effort into analysing the fundamentals of banking management, highlighting practices that could be particularly useful to microfinance practitioners in collaborating with banks and financial intermediaries, as well as informal and formal MFIs. Using the risk management approach, the book identifies the different steps of the microfinance process, combined with the different areas of risk. It illustrates how to measure performance and how to identify and manage microfinance risks in order to improve financial performance. The text goes on to discuss the main products and services available in modern microfinance, offering a new taxonomy of modern microfinance, examining the performance and monitoring of microfinance business and, finally, describing how such activities can be regulated. Book jacket.

Author Biography

MARIO LA TORRE is currently Full Professor in Banking and Finance and Director of the MA course in Film Art Management at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy. His publications include Securitisation and Banks, Postbank in Italy and Mergers & Acquisitions in Banking. Recent articles concerning microfinance include Modern Microfinance: The Role of Banks and Ethical Finance and Microfinance.

GIANFRANCO A. VENTO is a post doc scholar in Microfinance at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy. He was previously an analyst in the Banking Supervision Department at The Bank of Italy, and was Visiting Professor at the University of Buenos Aires. His main research interest relates to the money market and microfinance. He has been published by leading Italian academic journals and has followed several microfinance projects in developing countries for an Italian NGO. He is the author of Interbank Market and Eurosystem (Giappichelli 2005).

Table of Contents

A New Conception of Microfinance * Products and Services in Modern Microfinance * The Main Features of Microcredit * Sustainability and Outreach: The Goals of Microfinance * Risk Management in Microfinance * Monitoring Microfinance Processes * Microfinance Performance * The Role of Regulation * The Road Ahead: A Platform for Microfinance

A New Conception of Microfinance * Products and Services in Modern Microfinance * The Main Features of Microcredit * Sustainability and Outreach: The Goals of Microfinance * Risk Management in Microfinance * Monitoring Microfinance Processes * Microfinance Performance * The Role of Regulation * The Road Ahead: A Platform for Microfinance