COVID-19 is a global health and humanitarian crisis that has led to unprecedented financial crisis disproportionately impacting the poor, marginalised and small businesses. Institutions serving the poor and the marginalised are also being disproportionately affected. As a financial front liner, microfinance is facing unprecedented pressure to preserve their portfolio quality amidst the crisis.

Globally there are more than 120 million microfinance customers and the gross loan portfolio stands at USD 112 billion. As the pandemic rages across the world, many customers – individuals and small businesses – are finding it increasingly difficult to repay their loans.

With small businesses representing 90% of total businesses and 50% of the employment worldwide, dwindling economic activity will negatively impact the sector. Further, households are running out of emergency cash/savings to withstand economic shocks emerging from the crisis. It is also important to support the sector because 85% of microfinance customers are women. While traditional financial service providers have often neglected women and women-owned MSMEs, microfinance institutions have targeted them – even exclusively in some cases.

In this context, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) intends to organise a webinar at 03:00AM (UTC) / 11:00AM (KL) and 13:00PM (UTC) / 21:00PM (KL) on Monday, 13th July 2020 to bring together regulators and key stakeholders to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the microfinance sector from customer, business, and policy perspective.

Please confirm your participation by registering online using link below by Thursday, 09 July 2020

For any questions or queries, please contact at WG@afi-global.org