Tag: Microfinance

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series on the recently released NCAER-MFIN report, “Assessing the Effectiveness of Regulated Small Borrowing in India”. In this blog, we examine issues related to measurement and empirical strategy.

This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on the recently released NCAER-MFIN report, “Assessing the Effectiveness of Regulated Small Borrowing in India”. In this blog, we turn to some of the broader claims advanced in the report regarding the wider benefits of microfinance and assess whether these claims hold up when situated in a broader empirical context.

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on the recently released NCAER-MFIN report, “Assessing the Effectiveness of Regulated Small Borrowing in India” (March 2026).

Liquidity support by the Centre may offer symptomatic relief, but India’s microfinance sector needs a structural recast. Without reforms to address recurring cycles of over-lending and loan stress, another credit guarantee package will only postpone the next crisis in this fragile sector.

In the paper, we lay out a theoretical frame for thinking about microfinance crises. The theoretical frame draws from Hyman Minsky’s 1977 work on financial instability, and layers over it a cultural reasoning that recognises overlending and overborrowing as cultural traits that sometimes takes hold of microfinance markets.

This study sought to understand the impact of the new regulations on the microfinance sector through the lens of different categories of stakeholders – customers, leadership at microfinance institutions (MFIs) and intermediating staff.

Debt distress among microfinance borrowers is on the rise, sufficiently so that it may be characterised as a crisis for the sector. This is driven by factors across the supply- and demand-sides, as well as factors inherent in the nature of the credit cycle, where periodic booms and busts have been present throughout history. To address this, we propose two sets of recommendations for the regulator: a set of recommendations that can be initiated in the short-term and another set that can be initiated over the medium-term.

This chapter emphasises the realities of the sector that create a feedback loop, where lenders are incentivised to over-lend and borrowers to over-borrow, until crisis intervenes as a necessary and often tragic correction

According to a report by Crif High Mark, microfinance loans overdue for up to 31-180 days increased from 2.1% in March 2024 to 2.7% in June 2024. While there could be several supply-side factors at play for the rise in defaults, in this blog we direct our attention to reviewing the household side of the story by assessing the changes in household balance sheets post the COVID-19 pandemic.

The microfinance industry has witnessed moves by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to revise the regulatory framework (March 2022) for it and also caution it against an exclusive focus on business growth (November 2022).