Poverty Outreach Reports
The PPI team has created several ‘Poverty Outreach Reports’ which analyze poverty outreach, based on PPI data, across multiple organizations.
The analysis looks at poverty outreach along three key dimensions:
- Concentration: the percentage of clients living below selected poverty line(s) – both national and international
- Scale: the number of poor clients served
- Penetration: the percentage of total poor clients in a province/state/region of operation
One goal of these reports was to set appropriate benchmarks for poverty outreach, upon which performance could be tracked against to identify effective interventions and improve products and services for the poor.
Summary of Findings Across Four States of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Bihar
An examination of the portfolio of microfinance institutions across the four PSIG states revealed that nearly half of new MFI client recruitments are happening between the $1.25 to $2.5 2005 PPP Poverty Line segment, with a third between $1.25 and $1.88 2005 PPP Poverty Line segment. Against this encouraging sign it is to be noted that there is ample scope to expand the access of microfinance in the PSIG states below the $1.25 2005 PPP Poverty Line, especially to the poorest of the poor, as well as a need to spread its outreach to specific pockets hitherto highly underpenetrated.
IFC partnered with the Grameen Foundation, the Cisco Foundation, and 14 MFIs that agreed to participate in this study. It covers six Latin American countries: Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The study utilizes information these MFIs have collected in terms of poverty likelihood – using the Progress Out of Poverty® Index – supplemented by in-depth interviews with industry experts. The study found that MFIs that focus their commercial strategies in regions with higher percentage of poor reach more poor people. It also highlighted that the search for less competitive market segments – rather than principled mission statements – seems to be driving greater poverty outreach. This report also points to areas for further research. IFC is committed to this study of outreach, and development impact of microfinance institutions, and the market forces which affect them over time. By sharing the results of this research, and contributing to the debate around such topics, IFC seeks to support the development of the industry as part of its goal to reach universal access to financial services by the year 2020.
Based on A Representative State-wide Study of Microfinance in Karnataka, India
This groundbreaking report analyzes PPI data from 10 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the Philippines to illustrate how MFIs and other pro-poor organizations can use poverty measurement data to evaluate their social performance.
