Industry Leaders Create Microfinance Investing Standards
Banjo, S.

As the microfinance industry becomes more sophisticated and thus more complex, the need for metrics, transparency and regulation are becoming clearer to industry leaders in order to scale and continue the programs. Amidst a boom of for-profit investment opportunities to address social and environmental problems, industry leaders including J.P. Morgan Chase, Prudential Financial Inc., Citigroup and Deutsche Bank announced a new coalition to create reporting and investing standards.

Joined by the Rockefeller Foundation and USAID, the private-public partnership announced the Global Impacting Investing Network (GIIN), at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York supported by commitments of more than US$4 million from founding members.

The group looks to form an investor's council that will work toward the creation and adoption of industry infrastructure, metrics and reporting and investment standards. The creators say these metrics will address longtime barriers in the socially-responsible investing industry, such as the lack of transparency and credibility in how funds define, track, and report on the social and environmental performance of their capital.

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