As the blog series on Islamic Microfinance Challenge is wrapping up, below is a summary of the main points that the posts, comments, and challenge winners made. Business Model for Islamic Microfinance: What does it need? Market segmentation from day one:  In conventional microfinance, an MFI begins usually with one product which does not fit [...]

Al Amal provides various financial services and products (Islamic financing, savings, solidarity insurance, etc.) and is among a handful of microfinance institutions in the Arab World providing Islamic financial services. The bank continually works to improve competitiveness in the market by providing new products that meet the needs of the target segment and reach as [...]

Enterprise Development through Islamic Financial Services Innovation at CWCD has led to a complete organizational transformation, where CWCD has let go of its conventional microfinance programs and dedicated itself completely towards Islamic Microfinance. This conversion has allowed CWCD to benefit from better recovery rates, increased organizational and borrower sustainability, as well as enabling itself to [...]

Our business idea for the Islamic Microfinance Challenge 2010 was to mobilize savings using a Recycled Waste Savings Product.  The project was designed to address pollution and waste management issues in the capital city of Bandung, in the West Java province of Indonesia.   Approximately 2,000 tons of waste is collected on a daily basis in [...]

Tanzania eco-Volunteerism’s (TeV) honey project is a community development program providing rural poor communities of Tanzania with an innovative microfinance model that is in complete compliance with Islamic guidelines for business and finance. TeV’s microfinance activities are sustainable, scalable, and market-driven and include interest-free loans (qard hasan), savings (wadiah), and insurance (takaful). TeV’s mission is [...]

Winning project idea At Tameer, we consistently hear a need for Islamic Banking products. Pakistan does not have any visible Islamic microfinance banks or institutions, so this is a critical project to move forward, albeit in a staged way to limit risk and cost and making sure that we apply new learning as we go. [...]

For more details on Islamic finance products click here. If there are so many poor Muslims in the world, and if the overwhelming majority of those Muslims do not have access to financial services, and if two thirds of these either insist or prefer having financial products that comply with Sharia, and if there are [...]

Today, microfinance and Islamic finance are professionalized industries with diverse products, growing client bases, and widening geographical coverage. Both have developed innovative solutions to cater to populations that are outside the fold of conventional financial access. They share objectives of providing inclusive banking through financing productive, asset-backed activity, and lay special emphasis on economic empowerment [...]

Mohammed Abdullah of Deutsche Bank, a guest blogger for the Microfinance Blog, is sharing his thoughts about Islamic microfinance and promoting the Islamic Microfinance Challenge 2010 sponsored by CGAP, Deutsche Bank, Islamic Development Bank and Grameen-Jameel. If one takes a step back and looks at the current microfinance environment, one would see a maturing industry with several [...]