Relación entre la expresión de clusterina y las variables del seminograma.

Modern microfinance has its roots in the 1970s. Srnec and Svobodová (2009), indicate that development of MFIs can be divided into four phases: expansion (1970 - 1980), growth (1980 - 1990), commercialisation (1990 - 2000) and transformation secularisation (2000 - present). During the expansion period, MFIs spread mostly in developing countries and those institutions did not consider profitability; they focussed solely on poverty reduction. People had much enthusiasm for MFIs that were characteristically self-sustaining, self-expanding and self-perpetuating. More informal types of MFIs, such as voluntary groups, were established to help change

24 the living standards of people who were unable to sustain themselves with basic needs. During this period, microcredit was generated through group lending methods and village banking methods.

The growth period of MFIs was characterised by different types of MFIs which had significant financial dualism due to the coexistence of formal and informal MFIs. Even when formal MFIs dominated the municipal environment, they could not access the low income clients who were living in the municipal area due to their lack of familiarity with the needs of low income people. The informal sector was more wide-spread in rural areas but it was not quite transparent. Financial relationships were mainly based on historical, tribal, familiar and traditional relationships and the principle of these relationships was honour and promise. Formal MFIs had larger scope and were governed and controlled by the given public institutions with rapid growth in the number of served clients.

Continuous growth of microfinance activities and the acceleration of transformation of informal MFIs to formal MFIs were the characteristics of the period of commercialisation in 1990-2000. Many organisations dealing with MFI activities accelerated the transformation, e.g. UNITUS6 _{in the USA. During this period,}

microcredit experienced considerable support from NGOs, governmental organisations and rapid growth in the number of served clients.

During the transformation secularisation period (year 2000 onwards), microfinance created financial markets by attracting small- and medium- sized investors. This created a rapid rise in the entry of financial investors into financial markets in poor countries and led to increased interest rates in the sector. The rapid early growth of the microfinance movement primarily consisted of non-profit, socially motivated lenders seeking to reach as many low income clients with credit. Later they demonstrated that through the use of new lending technologies, such as joint liability contracts and dynamic incentives, a substantial portion of this new market could in fact be lent to profitably. This realisation has drawn profit-motivated lending institutions into these markets. With the growth of microfinance activities

6 _{UNITUS is a donor organisation which provides donations to worthy NGOs worldwide. Currently} it leverages the Unitus Acceleration Model to partner with 23 MFIs in India, Southeast Asia, South/Latin America and East Africa to deliver quality microfinance service to poor people.

25 in developing countries financial regulators suggested the need to frame policies to be integrated with some of the MFIs in order to regulate the financial services (Sinha, 2009).

The widespread enthusiasm for microcredit generated a dramatic increase in the microfinance activities in developing countries. In 1997, the Micro Credit Summit boosted awareness of MFIs as an initial step of a decade-long campaign to provide credit to 100 million of the world’s poorest families to enable them to become self- employed and thereby move away from poverty (Daley-Harris, 2006). The year 2005 marked a turning point for MFIs with the announcement of the International Year of Microcredit by the Economic and Social Council of the UN and the award in 2006 of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mohommed Yunus for his Grameen Bank concept (Hermes & Lensink, 2007; Viada & Gaul, 2012). According to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP, 2010), there is a plan for further expansion of microfinance activities as they contribute to mitigating poverty and assist in the development process of a country. Possibly, there is more extensive support for microfinance today than any other single tool for fighting world poverty. McIntosh and Wydick (2005) found that activities of the microfinance movement have been both admired and sustained by a broad range of academic scholars and major development finance institutions such as the World Bank development practitioners and donors.

Based on microfinance activities, microfinance providers can be divided into four general categories (Helms, 2006, pp. 35-57).

1. Informal financial service providers – The informal sector is considered to be unorganised with non-institutional entities that transmit traditional, retail and subsistence socioeconomic services directly to poor and low-income clients. This sector comprises moneylenders, pawnbrokers, savings/deposit collectors, money-guards, Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations with friends and neighbours. These providers live in the same community and know each other very well, so they can provide money in a very flexible, convenient and fast manner.

26 2. Member-owned organisations – These organisations include self-help groups (SHGs), credit unions, savings and credit co-operative, Financial Service Associations and Self-Managed Village Savings and Credit Banks. Similar to the informal sector, these organisations are also small, local and viable financial service providers with low transaction costs and offer convenient and flexible credits for their members. These organisations commonly rely on the savings of members as their main source of funds and group into federations at regional or national level.

3. NGOs – Since the mid-1980s, NGOs have conducted their activities and are the true pioneers of the microfinance sector as they emerged with the objective to serve the poor people. Some NGOs are highly dedicated to microfinance activities, while other NGOs provide microfinance as an additional service with their range of other services. NGOs can be fully local or associated with international networks. Due to growth constraints, some leading NGOs are performing in a commercial way.

4. Formal financial intuitions – Formal financial institutions are identified as those institutions which are monitored and supervised under the accepted rules and regulations imposed by the government. Formal institutions consist of government-owned agricultural, development, savings and postal banks, private commercial banks and non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs) and rural or community banks. These institutions offer a wide range of financial services through branches which are spread across the country and internationally.