Our next SVMN meeting will be held on Monday, March 6th in Redwood City, and our speaker will be Peter Bladin, from the Grameen Technology Center.

To register for the event, please visit our SVMN event eVite here.

35% Interest Rates?!? Holy Mackerel!

The average interest rate that microfinance institutions charge a borrower for a loan is 35%. While this might seem high by western standards, it's still much better than the alternative of loan sharks who charge as much as 100% per day. But what makes up that 35%? Turns out it's rather expensive to provide microfinance services, where transaction values are low and cost to serve is high. So how can we reduce the costs of running an MFI in order to reduce rates to borrowers?

Peter Bladin, founder of the Grameen Technology Center (GTC), will help us think through the costs to run and MFI and introduce us to some solutions. Specifically, he will talk about the MIFOS project, an initiative of the GTC.

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