Press Room
- Micro Ensure eyes higher premiums with Malayan, Grepalife alliance
- Farm aid from space
- Melinda Gates in Davos: Lessons from Africa
- Planting seeds to outgrow poverty
- Opportunity Bank of Malawi Featured by Millenium Villages
- IFC Helps Russian Microfinance Institution FORUS Bank
- Congressional Delegation Visits Opportunity International Microfinance Bank in Kigali, Rwanda
- The Global Food Crisis
- Indian farmers to insure themselves against climate change crop failure
- Rwanda: UOB’s Loan Portfolio Grows to $5.2 Million
- Putting Ghana’s Informal Sector in Business
- Background and Fact Sheet: March 2009
- Omidyar Network Grants $4.5 Million to Opportunity International
- Opportunity Joins Campaign for Client Protection
- The Micro Insurance Agency becomes MicroEnsure
- Opportunity International’s Micro Insurance Agency to Develop Life, Health and Crop Insurance
- Microschools get top marks
- John Deere Foundation and Opportunity International Join to Fight Hunger
- Gates Foundation gives $2.2M for banks in Africa
- Farmers benefit from electronic money transfer
- 500,000 milestone achieved in the Philippines
- New bank branch opens in Malawi
Network Press Room
Opportunity Joins Campaign for Client Protection
September 24th, 2008
Opportunity International announces its participation as a founding partner in the Campaign for Client Protection in Microfinance. Launched by the Center for Financial Inclusion, the campaign is a broad-based initiative to unite microfinance providers in commitment to a set of standards for the appropriate treatment of low-income clients. Other partners in the Campaign for Client Protection include, Al Amana (Morocco), CGAP (World Bank), Compartamos Banco (Mexico), Deutsche Bank, Freedom from Hunger, Grameen Foundation, Pro Mujer and Women’s World Banking.
“It is vitally important that microfinance institutions first protect the interests of their clients,” says Opportunity International Network CEO Adrian Merryman, also an advisory board member for the Center for Financial Inclusion. “Opportunity International is committed to improving the lives of our clients by providing financial services and related training in a Christ-like manner. For us, this means being transparent and honest in our prices and seeking first to meet our clients’ needs.”
Designed to maintain and extend the microfinance industry’s dedication to the welfare of its clients in a period of rapid growth, the campaign will promote a Microbanker’s Oath, akin to the Hippocratic Oath, articulating six core principles:
1. Avoidance of reckless lending that creates over-indebtedness
2. Transparent and fair pricing
3. Collections practices that are not abusive or coercive
4. Ethical standards for staff
5. Recourse mechanisms for client problems
6. Privacy of client data
The campaign coincides with Opportunity’s own initiative to adopt a client Code of Conduct for all its majority-owned partners. The Code of Conduct is a list of ten promises to clients that Opportunity partners will display and keep being implemented by these partners in 2009.
About Opportunity International
Opportunity International is committed to solving global poverty. Serving approximately 1.2 million poor entrepreneurs in 28 developing countries, Opportunity International is a pioneer in offering small business loans, savings, insurance and training in basic business practices to women and men living in chronic poverty. Founded in 1971 as one of the first microcredit lenders, Opportunity International provides small loans – sometimes as little as $50 – and other services that allow poor entrepreneurs to start or expand a business, develop a steady income, provide for their families and create jobs for their neighbors. For more information, visit www.opportunity.net.
September 24th, 2008
