EMN 2008-2009 Overview - Réseau Européen de la Microfinance

Italy was, once again, the country with
the highest number of respondents. This was
possible thanks to the combined efforts of
members of the Italian Microfinance Network
(RITMI) and the lead coordinator Giordano
Dell’Amore Foundation, and due to the
large number of actors that consist of a large
number of small social microcredit initiatives
and other religious organisations providing
microcredit on a small scale.
To the extent that year after year the Pan-
European Microcredit survey is carried out,
and in spite of an enormous effort on behalf of
EMN, Fundación Nantik Lum and the country
coordinators, the disparate collaboration
between editions makes it very difficult to
draw accurate comparisons between reports.
The main motivation to track the evolution of
microfinance in Europe is hampered by the
difficulty in obtaining uniformity in the data
sample.
To better understand this difficulty, Table
1 below gives the total number of responses
obtained from MFIs over the last two editions
of the survey. We can observe that only 58
MFIs responded to both editions, representing
only 61% of the institutions that participated
in 2006-2007 that responded to the 2008-2009
edition. For this reason, only general data
with comparable samples in both 2006-2007
and 2008-2009 will be analysed. The total
number of institutions that responded for
the first time, that is to say, that have never
participated in the study, is 97 institutions.
Moreover, there were 113 institutions that
responded to the present edition that did not
participate in the 2006-2007 edition but did
participate in earlier editions (2004-2005 or
2002-2003).
Therefore, the data provided in this
report will refer exclusively to the 2008-2009
survey, and in some cases, efforts have been
made to compare data in order to highlight
sector trends. When comparisons are
used, it is important to keep in mind these
aforementioned sample differences. This
report will continue using the same structure
as the previous one in order to make the
analysis easier for readers.
Table 1: Comparison of responses in the last two survey editions
Total number of respondents for the 2008-2009 survey 170
Total number of newcomers for the 2008-2009 survey 97
Total number of respondents for the 2006-2007 survey 94
Number of institutions that responded for 2006-2007 and 2008-2009 58
The 2008-2009 survey questionnaire, which
was translated from English into six languages,
covered the majority of the relevant topics that
were included in the 2004-2005 and 2006-2007
surveys. However, some modifications were
made based on an agreement reached by the
Core Members of the EMN Research Working
Group. With these modifications in mind, the
Research Working Group held two face-toface
meetings, one on June 3rd in Milan and
the other on September 7th in Madrid, and
two conference calls over the span of 2009.
Briefly, the conclusions drawn from this
process by the Research Working Group
were:
a) To include questions that targeted
information on personal credit, but not
to differentiate personal and business
credit this throughout the entire
questionnaire;
b) To remove specific questions to simplify
and make coordinators’ work more
efficient;
c) To include new questions to cover the
topics of IT and technology, regulation
and legal environment, sustainability
and how the economic crisis has affected
the sector;
d) To establish a set of indicators on social,
financial and operational performance
to be asked systematically in the
survey, in collaboration with the social
performance and sustainability working
group;
e) To explain clearly these indicators and
illustrate how to calculate them by using
examples;
f) To edit questions specifically regarding
the interest rates charged so the reported
rates would be more transparent.
The survey used the European Union
accepted definition of microloans as loans of
25,000 euros or less made to microenterprises
or businesses with nine or fewer employees.
Nevertheless, some EU lenders have reported
loans for higher amounts that have been
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