小额信贷的可持续发展问题.doc

原文The Question of Sustainability forMicrofinance Institutions1.PrefaceMicroentrepreneurs have considerable difficulty accessing capital from mainstream financial institutions. One key reason is that the costs of information about the characteristics and risk levels of borrowers are high. Relationship-based financing has been promoted as a potential solution to information asymmetry problems in the distribution of credit to small businesses. In this paper, we seek to better understand the implications for providers of “microfinance” in pursuing such a strategy. We discuss relationship-based financing as practiced by microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the United States, analyze their lending process, and present a model for determining the break-even price of a microcredit product. Comparing the models results with actual prices offered by existing institutions reveals that credit is generally being offered at a range of subsidized rates to microentrepreneurs. This means that MFIs have to raise additional resources from grants or other funds each year to sustain their operations as few are able to survive on the income generated from their lending and related operations. Such subsidization of credit has implications for the long-term sustainability of institutions serving this market and can help explain why mainstream financial institutions have not directly funded microenterprises. We conclude with a discussion of the role of nonprofit organizations in small business credit markets, the impact of pricing on their potential sustainability and self-sufficiency, and the implications for strategies to better structure the credit market for microbusinesses.2.The MFI Lending Model in the United States MarketingMarketing drives the business model in terms of the volume of potential borrowers that an MFI is able to access and the pool of loans it can develop. Given that MFIs do not accept deposits and have no formal prior insight into a fresh potential customer base, they must invest in attracting new borrowers. Marketing leads are generated from a variety of sources: soliciting loan renewals fromexisting borrowers, marketing to existing clients for referrals, “grassroots” networking with institutions possessing a complimentary footprint in the target environment, and the mass media.At the outset of operations, before a borrower base is developed, portfolio growth is determined by the effectiveness of marketing through network and mass media channels. Once a borrower pool is established, marketing efforts can be shifted toward lower-cost marketing to existing borrowers and their peer networks. Even so, loans will likely attrite from a portfolio at a faster rate than renewals and borrower referrals can replenish itnew leads must continue to be generated through other, less effective channels.The Loan Application Process In economic terms, the loan application process represents an investment at origination with the aim of minimizing credit losses in the future. All else being equal, a greater investment in the credit application process will result in lower subsequent rates of delinquency and default; conversely, a less stringent process would result in greater rates of credit loss in the future. Setting the appropriate level of rigor in a credit application process is an exercise in analyzing loanapplicant characteristics and forecasted future behaviors while being cognizant of the cost of performing these analyses.Three steps characterize the loan application process.Preliminary Screen. The applicant is asked a short set of questions to establish the applicants eligibility for credit under the MFIs guidelines. This is sufficient to determine the likely strength of an application and whether an offer of credit could, in principle, be extended.Interview. At the interview stage, due diligence is performed to ensure that the loan purpose is legitimate and that the borrowers business has sufficient capacity and prospects to make consistent repayments. Cash-flow analysis is the core of the MFI due diligence procedure and for microfinance borrowers the data is often insufficiently formal, hindering easy examination of cash flow stability and loan payment coverage. As a result, this is a less standardized, more timeconsuming task than its equivalent in the formal lending markets.Underwriting and Approval. If a loan is recommended by an officer following the interview the application is then stresstested by an underwriter, who validates the cash flow and performs auxiliary analysis to ensure that the loan represents a positive addition to the lending portfolio.The dynamics of loan origination illustrate the trade-offs to be made to ensure an efficient credit process. Improved rigor could lead to a higher rate of declined applicants, and so higher subsequent portfolio quality, but at the expense of increased processing costs. For medium and larger loans, as application costs increase past an optimal point, the marginal benefit of improved portfolio quality is outweighed by the marginal expense of the credit application itself. However, for small loans there exists no such balance pointthe optimal application cost is the least that can be reasonably achieved. This motivates a less intensive credit application process, administered when a loan request falls beneath a certain threshold, typically a principal less than$5,000. MFIs can disburse such loans more quickly and cheaply by fast-tracking them through a transaction-based process and context learning.Loan MonitoringPost-loan monitoring is critical toward minimizing loss. In contrast to the creditapplication process, which attempts to preempt the onset of borrower delinquencyby declining high risk loans, monitoring efforts minimize the economic impact of delinquency once a borrower has fallen into arrears. In addition to the explicit risk to institutional equity through default, managing delinquent borrowers is an intensive and costly process.When dealing with repeat clients, there exists the opportunity to leverage information captured through monitoring on previous loans, enabling the MFI to shorten the full credit application without materially impacting the risk filter. In short, there is an opportunity to reduce operational costs without a corresponding increase in future loss rates. Repeat borrowers enable the information accrued during the relationship to be leveraged to mutual benefit of MFI and borrower. In this case, much of the information required to validate a loan application has been gathered during theprevious lending relationship. An MFI will also possess the borrowers paymenthistory, a more accurate indicator of future performance than an isolated financial snapshot taken during the standard application process. The challenge, however, is that for many MFI, a part of their mission is to graduate customers into mainstream commercial banking, which would not allow the MFI to collect additional interest payments from those customers.Overhead Costs For an MFI to sustain itself, each outstanding balance must contribute a proportional amount to institutional costs. Institutional costs are driven primarily by the size of the portfolio being maintained. The necessary staff, tools, technology, work environment, and management are functions of portfolio scale.We outline in Table 2 the institutionallevel costs of five MFIs with varying portfolio sizes to identify the proportional cost loading necessary to guarantee thatcentral costs are compensated for. The table shows that institutional costs increase at a slower rate than the rate at which the loan portfolio grows, so that the overhead allocation declines as an MFI achieves scale. We find that an MFI with a $500,000 portfolio will incur indirect costs of 26 percent, while an MFI with a $20 million portfolio will experience a much lower indirect cost loading of 6 percent. In the United States, the largest institution engaging solely in microfinance presently has a portfolio of $15 million.3.Discussion and ConclusionsContinued subsidization of credit also has implications for the long-term sustainability of MFIs. Our high-level analysis of projected self-sufficiency levels of various MFI sizes shows the importance of pricing appropriately. Even a modest deviation from the value-neutral price has a significant impact on the amount of subsidies needed to sustain the institution. As a consequence, it is imperative that MFIs rigorously analyze the true costs and review their pricing structures accordingly.It has yet to be demonstrated that microfinance can be performed profitablyin the United States. Nondepository MFIs may not have better information and/or technology to identify and serve less risky microbusinesses than formal institutions. It would therefore appear that formal institutions are acting rationally in choosing not to serve this market at present. However, MFIs have succeeded in channeling capital tomicrobusinesses. Still, MFIs often operate with certain public and/or private subsidies. Ultimately, more research is needed to ascertain whether the provision of microfinance offers a societal benefit in excess of economic costs. This paper is one of the first to document a very wide dispersion in the difference between value-neutral and actual pricing for a sample of MFIs. This suggests a wide dispersion in the economic subsidies inferred by these MFIs. More specifically,these subsidies are not being allocated on a consistent basis.If subsidies are required to serve the market at palatable interest rates for lenders and borrowers, it is incumbent on the microfinance industry to demonstrate that theirs is an efficient mechanism for delivering such subsidies. Once a subsidy is justified, institutions must be motivated to improve their operational efficiency so that they may offer microfinance borrowers the lowest possible equitable prices while not jeopardizing institutional viability.外文题目：The Question of Sustainability for Microfinance Institutions 出 处：Journal of Small Business Management 2007 45(1), pp. 2341. 作 者：J. Jordan Pollinger, John Outhwaite,and Hector Cordero-Guzmn 译 文：小额信贷的可持续发展问题（一）前言微型企业从主流金融机构获得资金有相当大的困难，其中的一个重要原因是对了解借款者所花费的信息费以及风险等级是很高的。关系型融资在解决分配信息不对称的小企业信贷问题时被晋升为一个潜在的方案。在本论文中，我们力求更好地了解“小额信贷”这样的战略供应商的含义。我们讨论在美国实行的关系型融资的小额信贷机构（MFIs），分析其贷款过程中，确定目前的小额贷款产品盈亏平衡价格的模式。该模型比较符合实际的结果是由现有机构提供的价格来显示的，信贷通常是在可提供的范围内对微型企业补贴利率。这意味着，小额信贷机构必须提高从赠款或每年其他基金的额外资源，以维持其运营。因为仅仅从它们的贷款及相关业务产生的收入来看，很少有人能够生存。此项信贷的资助已对这一为市场服务的机构的长期可持续发展形成影响，可以帮助解释主流金融机构为什么没有直接资助微型企业。最后，我们讨论非营利组织在小企业信贷市场的作用及其影响定价，讨论他们的可持续性发展潜力和自给自足性，并得到相关结构战略的启示，以便更好地为微型企业的信贷市场服务。（二）美国的小额信贷模型在本节中，我们描述了当前在美国小额信贷机构所应用小额贷款模式的过程和经验。我们讨论小额信贷机构经营模式的每个环节和从现实世界得到的成本以及作者在产业研究过程中所得经验来总结出结果。在实践中，我们承认经营成本的高低和分布可能会受到各种因素的影响，其中包括地理区位因素，机构战略因素，以及每一个小额信贷机构的贷款效率。1.市场营销这么一个市场驱动的商业模式，为小额信贷机构在数量上提供了许多的潜在借款人。鉴于小额信贷机构的不接受存款性，已经决定他们进入一个新的没有正式事先洞察潜在客户群前，他们必须在投资上吸引新的借款人。市场营销，领导了各种资源的产生：招揽新的贷款来更新现有的借款者，营销关系的存在，使得“草根”网络与小额贷款机构拥有广阔的目标环境和大众媒体。在行动开始前，要发展借款人池，投资组合的经济增长是通过营销网络和媒体渠道来实现的。一旦借款人池建立，营销工作可由成本较低的市场转移到现有借款人及他们的对等网络。即便如此，贷款仍然可能会流失，从投资组合中可以以更快的速度更新借款人，可以及时补充资金而不必继续通过其他不太有效的渠道。2.贷款申请过程在经济方面,贷款申请放在总投资过程的起点,目的是为了减少未来的信贷损失。在其它条件都相同, 更大规模的投资信贷申请程序将导致随后较低的拖欠率；相反，一个不太严格的信贷申请过程将导致未来更大的信用损失率。设置适当严格信贷申请的水平，在分析一个贷款申请人风险特征和预测未来行为的过程中是被认为是值得付出分析成本的。3.贷款申请的三个步骤(1)初步印象。根据小额信贷机构的指导方针建立一套信贷申请人资格，向申请人问一个简短的问题。这足以能确定一个申请人的等级以及是否可以提供信用。 (2)面谈。在面试阶段，由于诚恳的态度是明确的，以确保贷款目的是合法的，而借款人所从事的业务要有足够的能力和前景，能够到期还款。小额信贷机构调查程序的核心是对借款人进行财务分析，但小额贷款借款人数据往往是不够正规的，阻碍了检查其现金流量的稳定及贷款的支付范围。因此，与同等规模正规的贷款市场相比，这是一个不太规范、更加耗时的任务。小额信贷机构经常代理执行技术援助，同时在贷款发放中，帮助编制借款人的财务报表，例如。在这个信用欺诈更广泛的社会中，许多小额信贷机构扮演了一个阻碍借贷活动效率的角色。反之，较大的企业可能并不需要这种类型的技术帮助，但这是抵消了其业务复杂性的增加。小额贷款的借款人往往缺乏传统的抵押资产，而小额信贷机构需要其他相关担保人对高风险贷款进行担保.但低风险贷款则可以免除安排一个连带保证人的担保。在拖欠贷款的情况下，对借款人的连带保证人施加压力。这种关系在与借款人的访谈期间可以进一步深化，并且可以对申请人的业务操作进行观察。(3)包销和批准. 如果一笔贷款发放后，由审贷人员采访申请人，然后由承销商来验证借款人的现金流量，并执行辅助分析，以确保贷款是一个积极的贷款组合。贷款动力学的产生得以确保一个有效的信贷过程。严谨的改进制度可导致申请人的上升速度的下降，因此能保证后续贷款组合拥有较高的质量，但需要超过所增加的处理成本。对于大、中贷款，申请成本会增加，边际组合质量效益的提高是没法改变信贷申请边际费用本身的。然而，对于小额贷款，至少不存在这样最佳平衡机制费用点。这促使当