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Summary of Last lecture • Size of the Microfinance Industry • Why is Microfinance Growing? • What Are the Risks of Microfinance? UNDERSTANDING CLIENTS, THE MARKET, AND THE OPPORTUNITIES The $5 Trillion Invisible Market • The World Resources Institute’s project, “The Next 4 Billion,” has taken on the challenge of quantifying the opportunities at the base of the pyramid. The $5 Trillion Invisible Market • Its target, the estimated 4 billion people in the world who get by on incomes of less than $3,000 per person per year, are, in fact, a majority of the world’s population. The $5 Trillion Invisible Market • The project declared that this population segment constitutes a global consumer market worth an estimated $5 trillion, broken down as follows: The $5 Trillion Invisible Market • The Asian BOP market contains 70 percent of the total spending power ($3.5 trillion). Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe each account for roughly 10 percent of the total. • In Africa, despite recent growth in the middle class, the BOP market is still the market. It involves 95 percent of the population and 71 percent of purchasing power. The $5 Trillion Invisible Market • Even in Latin America, the BOP market constitutes 70 percent of the population and 28 percent of total spending power. • The Eastern Europe/Central Asia BOP market is worth close to $500 billion annually. The $5 Trillion Invisible Market • While the overall market includes many people living somewhat above their national poverty lines, an important subset is the 1 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day, the poorest segment of humanity. The $5 Trillion Invisible Market • This group requires special attention if it is not to remain excluded while the high end of the BOP market receives more services. Much of the BOP market is rural, especially the lowerincome portions, and this too poses special challenges. Profiles of the Working Poor • Global facts and figures show the market potential in the broadest terms. We now shift to a human scale to gain an understanding of the people involved. Profiles of the Working Poor • The portraits that follow give us insights about real people from the BOP. • Knowing the people is essential for learning to serve this market effectively. Before you turn to the rest of this course, please make sure to read these profiles. Delia • A pueblo joven (new town) in Lima, Peru. • At the start of the day, Delia unlocks a padlock and swings back the metal gates that protect her shop at night. The shop carries groceries and a little bit of just about everything else. Delia’s business sits in the middle of a dense market, an environment of concrete and metal. Delia • The pace is as fast as the beat of the Latin music coming from radios and boom boxes on all sides. Delia greets the friends who arrive to open their neighboring market stalls and the tenants who rent rooms in the three-story house she has built on top of the shop Delia • She spends her day purchasing inventory, chatting with special customers, and looking over the shoulders of her employees. Delia • She spends her day purchasing inventory, chatting with special customers, and looking over the shoulders of her employees. Delia • Delia is one of millions of urbanites swelling the populations of the Andean capitals: Lima, La Paz, Quito, Bogotá, and Caracas. Though only a generation away from the campo, she has never known any other life than that of Peru’s urban “informal sector,” estimated to include more than half of the total urban Peruvian labor force. Delia • The informal sector includes all those people who survive by operating micro- or small enterprises. Most informalsector enterprises involve a single microentrepreneur working alone, with his or her family or with a couple of employees. Delia • The mom and pop shop and the small farmer are both part of the informal sector. Their enterprises are generally not registered formally with the government. They exist to satisfy immediate economic needs. Delia • Some economists regard informality as a choice. They assume that people can choose to be formal, keep proper books, register their businesses, and pay taxes. If they “decide” to be informal, their motivation is presumed to be avoidance of the costs of formality. Delia • In this view, informals are seen as shirkers who do not pull their weight in society and compete unfairly with upstanding formal businesses. Delia would be angry and bewildered to hear talk like that. For her, informality is simply the life she knows. Delia • Today Delia thinks of herself as a successful businesswoman. But years ago, she found herself with three young children, no livelihood, no way to earn a living, and no one to help her. Her husband had abandoned her for another woman, taking with him the proceeds from selling their market stall. Delia • Delia and some women friends formed a group to get a loan from what is now Mibanco, Peru’s leading microfinance bank. They borrowed as much as they dared, having nothing more to offer as security than each other’s group solidarity. Delia • Delia’s first and probably biggest hurdle was to save enough for a new stall. She invested and improved her business and her family life, upgrading the stall several times, increasing her inventory, building rooms in her house to rent out, and educating her three daughters. Delia • Over many years, she has worked her way up from a $100 or $200 group loan to an individual loan of $3,000. Delia • Delia’s first steps in launching her microenterprise were small and may have appeared unpromising. When she started, the shelves had only a few items. Delia • Many retail businesses like hers crowd the market, so she had to keep her prices very low. It was hard to obtain a large enough sum of money to make significant improvements. Delia • Today the walls are filled from floor to ceiling. Every bit of space provides an opportunity to stock something else. Delia • Before her microloan, Delia had never been a customer of a bank. If she needed a large sum of money, she had a few choices, none of them good. Delia • She could borrow from the local moneylender. She and her friends called him chupasangre, the bloodsucker. Delia • She could buy on credit from the wholesalers who supplied her inventory, but they would raise their prices, squeezing her profits. She could borrow from friends, but they tended to be in the same situation as she was. Delia • When Delia first borrowed, several important things happened. First, and possibly the most significant, she turned something she was rich in—friends— from social capital into real money through the group guarantee. Delia • Second, she gained independence from the chupasangre and a stronger bargaining position with her suppliers. Third, her interest costs went down considerably from informal rates. Delia • Fourth, she gained permanent access to finance, which gave her the courage to plan and invest because she could count on accessing a loan when she needed it, as long as she paid it back faithfully. Delia • And finally, she had the experience of being trusted and valued by a formal institution. She • had gone from invisible to included. What Do We Learn from Delia and Sonali? • Next lecture Summary • UNDERSTANDING CLIENTS, THE MARKET, AND THE OPPORTUNITIES • Case Studies