Benchmarking the financial performance, growth, and outreach of greenfield MFIs in Africa

We use regressions to benchmark African greenfield microfinance institutions (MFIs) relative to other African microfinance providers and find that greenfields grew faster, improved profitability to levels comparable to the top MFIs, and substantially increased their lending to women. Effects were strongest for greenfields that followed a consultant-led model to establish a deep retail banking presence spanning multiple countries, including the creation of extensive branch networks. Though their loan sizes are larger than most African MFIs, indicating less outreach to the poorest market segments, they have achieved rapid gains in financial inclusion on a broad scale for somewhat more affluent clients.