IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijfsmg/v3y2008i2p171-187.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the performance of microfinance providers: an assessment of past and present practices

Author

Listed:
  • Ronny Manos
  • Jacob Yaron

Abstract

Measuring the performance of providers of financial services to poor individuals and to micro and small enterprises is a relatively new phenomenon, and the paper discusses the reasons for this. It is argued that using traditional financial ratios to assess performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs) is inappropriate, owing to the high level of subsidies popular in the industry, which these measures ignore. In contrast, two performance measures that are becoming increasingly popular in the microfinance industry do attempt to adjust for subsidies granted to MFIs. These two performance measures, financial self sufficiency (FSS) and the subsidy dependence index (SDI), are compared and contrasted. The paper points to the superiority of the SDI over the FSS, and suggests the use of the outreach index alongside the SDI, to measure the degree to which the MFI has achieved social objectives.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronny Manos & Jacob Yaron, 2008. "Measuring the performance of microfinance providers: an assessment of past and present practices," International Journal of Financial Services Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 3(2), pages 171-187.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijfsmg:v:3:y:2008:i:2:p:171-187
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=19669
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jacob Yaron & Ronny Manos, 2010. "Information Transparency and Agency Costs in the Microfinance Industry," Review of Market Integration, India Development Foundation, vol. 2(1), pages 87-99, April.
    2. Aruna Balammal & R. Madhumathi & M.P. Ganesh, 2016. "Pentagon Performance Model of Indian MFIs," Paradigm, , vol. 20(1), pages 1-13, June.
    3. Trinh, Quoc Dat & Haddad, Christian & Tran, Kim Thuan, 2022. "Financial reporting quality and dividend policy: New evidence from an international level," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijfsmg:v:3:y:2008:i:2:p:171-187. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=76 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.