Building New Foundations in Housing Microfinance: European Microfinance Award 2017 summary

The latest European Dialogue published by the European Microfinance Platform presents the picture of the trends and some of the most interesting initiatives underway in the housing microfinance sector that were submitted for the European Microfinance Award 2017. MFC staff: Katarzyna Pawlak and Ewa Bańkowska, had a privilege to be part of the award process as expert consultants.

The publication is the compilation of the most interesting cases of financial institutions providing housing microfinance from around the globe. From ECA region, First Microfinance Bank in Tajikistan hit the group of semi-finalists.

In India, the specialized housing finance providers help slum inhabitants to move to newly developed affordable housing, offering a 7-10 year micro mortgage. In Mexico, one of the finalists, reaches out to more than 1 mln low income clients, through a diversified outreach channels. In Afghanistan, the other finalist built 3 demo houses, to help both the clients and the masters understand how to reduce the seismic risk and use properly local raw materials. Other MFIs go an extra mile to help their clients get government subsidies for house construction.

All together, the analysis of 37 cases of MFIs providing housing finance lead to the list of key success factors:

• recognizing the value of partnership,
• a genuine commitment to Technical Assistance,
• flexible products,
• new approaches to collateral and calculating the income,
• holistic and demand driven vision for housing, which should be recognized as income generating source in many cases of poor clients.

Download the European Dialogue №12