I remember back at UC Berkeley I went to a little informational session about a company called Prosper...looks like they're still around :-):
<a href="http://www.prosper.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.prosper.com/</a><p>If I remember correctly, the lady presenting was with eBay while Meg Whitman was there and at the time (back in 2006) this was a new venture she had become involved with. Seemed pretty neat back then.
I am invested in microfinance and want to invest more, but there's a constant news stream of problems with the providers and I'd really like to know who I should invest with.<p>This article references a few complaints about Kiva's lack of transparency. Two weeks ago there was an HN article on Zidisha's lack of transparancy [0]. Zidisha's website lists their repayment rate at 74.31% [1], which seems very low compared to other providers which report 90%+. This author likes MyC4, but they appear to focus on European investors (given the Euro currency symbol).<p>If anyone has any solid suggestions on who I should invest with, I'd love to hear them.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546394" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546394</a>
[1] <a href="https://www.zidisha.org/index.php?p=43" rel="nofollow">https://www.zidisha.org/index.php?p=43</a>
mfheretic, you're counting "active loans" as cash in the bank, but I think you have some active loans that are likely to default and cause losses...<p>This is the account I looked at: <a href="https://www.zidisha.org/microfinance/profile/Jessica.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.zidisha.org/microfinance/profile/Jessica.html</a> That account gave a 20% loan to Hellen Festo, made 40 loans, etc., as you mentioned in your blog post.<p>I took a look at the first ten active loans listed on that profile. Four loans in particular are way behind on payments. If those loans default, you'd be out $160. On $1,000 in principal, that would represent a loss of 16%, instead of breaking even. That's more in line with Zidisha's write-off rate of 18.65%: <a href="https://www.zidisha.org/index.php?p=43" rel="nofollow">https://www.zidisha.org/index.php?p=43</a>
Serious question here. Is microfinance a good thing? What do we know about how it affects the borrowers? Most of the things I have read have been from a lenders perspective. About profit, and investment. Is that really the goal?