Harvard Business School recently published a business case study titled “Microfinance International Corporation: No, Not Another Microfinance Case”, written by International Entrepreneurship Professor Daniel Isenberg. Atsumasa Tochisako, President and CEO of Microfinance International Corporation (MIC), said, “I am hopeful that our attempts and experiences will inspire students to come up with innovative solutions to social problems that are believed to be unsolved.” Addressing an issue that has global implications – the financial integration of the poor – MIC has attempted unique approaches in many aspects of its business – from products and services to marketing, funding and personnel.
MIC works to leverage immigrant remittances to improve the financial infrastructure for the unbanked in developed and developing countries. Citing the significant number of the worlds’ poor households that depend on the income earned by family members working in industrialized nations, MIC tries to maximize the economic capacity of the migrated bread-winners by offering them a line of financial services including microcredits in the US. In particular, MIC encourages the channeling of remittances through professional financial institutions by offering a remittance solution to banks in the US and microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries, thus increasing the financial integration of the poor on both sides of the border.
MIC is capitalized by socially conscious individual investors as well as the Development Bank of Japan and FMO, the Netherlands’ Development Finance Corporation. MIC is aiming to expand its business from the Americas into Europe, Africa and Asia. It is also enlarging the network of Alante Financial, its retail financial service branches for immigrants. Since the beginning of 2008, it has added four new branches and is preparing to open two more, bringing the total to 15.
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