An influx of investor capital into microfinance has prompted the industry to re-examine its mission and purpose, one speaker at the San Diego Microfinance Summit said Wednesday.

“You’re having a bifurcation in the industry,” said Terry Provance, executive director of international private microcredit provider Oikocredit. “With the overflow into microcredit now, that money has become a temptation. More people are now interested in profitability.”

Microfinance, or microcredit, involves the extension of small loans to poor people who do not have access to standard loans. Loans can be as little as $25 or as much as $35,000 and are often directed at the impoverished in developing countries.

Still, San Diego alone is home to more than a dozen organizations that offer some sort of microfinance program — if not solely focusing on microfinance. Some focus their efforts abroad, while others aim to help local low- to moderate-income entrepreneurs with little creditit history and/or new immigrants.

Provance, one of several presenters at the full-day summit at the University of San Diego, described how individual and institutional investors’ dollars have flooded into the microfinance space within the last three or four years — particularly after Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

As of 2009, there were more than 100 microfinance investment vehicles — private funds like Oikocredit that provide a way to invest in microfinance institutions, or MFIs — as opposed to just more than 40 MIVs around the world in 2004.

To read the full article by Rebecca Go with the San Diego Daily Transcript please visit. http://www.sddt.com/Finance/article.cfm?SourceCode=20100429czh

Terry Provance was one of the presenters at the San Diego Microfinance Summit. Nearly 240 individuals attended the event to learn more about microfinance in San Diego, as well as topics and issues impacting the international microfinance industry. The event was deemed a success after selling out for the second year in a row. To learn more about the speakers and organizations represented at the Summit please CLICK HERE