*Credit risk tops microfinance concerns
*Financial crisis is first major stress test for MFIs
By Daniel Bases
NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) - The global financial crisis that developed in rich nations is leaving practically no corner of the financial world unscathed, including microfinance, the small-scale financial services offered to the world's poor, a new survey reveals.
The industry gained traction during the global boom of easy credit and low inflation, spurring competition that threatens to take the focus off of alleviating poverty and more toward making a profit.
But now with lending conditions tight, costs rising and return on assets dropping, credit risk is the biggest concern among those surveyed versus the quality of microfinance institutional (MFI) management or corporate governance which topped an early 2008 survey.
"Today, all the top findings relate directly to the crisis, to do with the impact of difficult financial markets, of recession, and of global economic turmoil," David Lascelles, one of the survey's lead authors, told reporters.
(For a list of the top 25 risks, click on [ID:nN07447329])
This marks a first major stress test for microfinance institutions, the survey from the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation showed.
"Many MF (microfinance) clients live close to the edge and are perilously exposed to worsening economic conditions," the report said.
RISKS
Credit risk is the No. 1 concern, moving from the No. 10 spot in the prior survey. Liquidity, which is generally defined as having the cash available to make loans or meet deposit withdrawals was the second highest risk, having come in at the 20th spot last year.
"Respondents see the economic crisis hitting microfinance at a time when credit quality is already deteriorating for reasons linked to the more competitive nature of the industry and a more calculating attitude to debt among borrowers," the report said.
According the Microfinance Information eXchange (MIX), the 1,200 MFI's that report their data have 64 million borrowers and 33.5 million savers. The numbers are growing at a rate of 25 percent per year, while total assets of these MFI's is $32 billion.
The survey, co-sponsored by Citi Foundation, a unit of
financial services firm Citigroup
The broadening MFI client base has led to greater integration with the established financial sectors of many developing nations. And that brings political risk.
"Political risk always lingers in people's minds....The regulatory oversight is getting broader," Bob Annibale, global director of Citi Microfinance, told Reuters.
Annibale said there is most often a concern political interference will take the form of interest rate ceilings.
"That would make even the most nonprofit organization in most countries very hard to operate if (ceilings) were imposed without some reality of what the costs are for those institutions to deliver services in many more areas," he said.
RISING COSTS
The cost of doing business in the microfinance sector is also rising due to competitive pressures, as more entrants into the market diversify their financial product offerings and swapped out low cost, or concessional, funding for more commercial funds in the credit boom.
"They swapped out a lot of those funds and some of them have taken on risks that they probably might not have been fully equipped internally to handle," Blaine Stephens, the chief operating officer of MIX told Reuters.
Stephens said that total financing expenses for MFI's have risen to roughly 6.7 percent over the average asset base as of 2007, the latest full year of data available. That is an increase of nearly 100 basis points over the prior two years.
At the same time, MIX data shows returns on assets were 1.5 percent for MFI's at the end of 2007. That is a down from the 1.7 to 2.0 percent return of prior years, Stephens said.
He added that nonperforming loans (NPL) have increased, in some of the smaller markets such as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Morocco by double digits "but nothing that high globally."
Stephens said NPLs were still well within single digits, perhaps 3 to 5 percent at most.
"The main pressures on profitability are higher funding costs and bad debts. Gabriel Solorzano, chairman of Banex in Nicaragua, said: 'What profitability? Does anyone still have profits?" (Reporting by Daniel Bases, editing by Leslie Gevirtz)