Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) provide loans to low income individuals. The credit scoring systems of MFIs, if they exist, are strictly financial. Although many MFIs consider the social impact of their loans, they do not incorporate formal systems to estimate this social impact. This paper...

A poverty penalty arises when the poor pay more than the non-poor to access goods and services. An example is the cost to access credit. While still high, microcredit interest rates are lower than the interest rates charged by moneylenders. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) usually justify the...

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) lend to the poor, fostering these individuals’ financial inclusion. However, microfinance clients suffer from high interest rates, a type of poverty penalty. Reducing margins and lowering interest rates should be a target for MFIs with a strong social...

Ethical banking, microfinance institutions or certain credit cooperatives, among others, grant socially responsible loans. This paper presents a credit score system for them. The model evaluates both social and financial aspects of the borrower. The financial aspects are evaluated under the...

Poor people were excluded from financial services until microfinance institutions (MFIs) emerged. The mission of MFIs is to alleviate poverty, contributing to women empowerment especially in rural communities. Microcredits can be analyzed under Pareto’s 80/20 Principle. Their clients are...

This paper studies the bankruptcy of USA banks since 2009. It first analyzes the financial symptoms that precede bankruptcy, such as low profitability, insufficient revenue, or low solvency ratios. It also goes into the causes of these symptoms. It poses several hypotheses on causes of failure,...

This paper uses Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) for the prediction of the 2008 USA banking crisis. PLS regression transforms a set of correlated explanatory variables into a new set of uncorrelated variables, which is appropriate in the presence of multicollinearity. PLS-DA...

This paper proposes a decision-making model that assesses the different aspects associated to Social Venture Capital (SVC) investment decisions. SVC companies buy shares of investee companies, valued according to financial and social aspects. The proposed model includes three main factors: the...