Posted By: Margaret Pozzini

Fri Nov 10, 7:00 AM ET

Davis, CA (PRWEB) November 10, 2006 -- MicroCredit Enterprises today announced a major modernization of its lending eligibility and criteria for overseas microfinance institutions (MFIs). MicroCredit Enterprises makes tiny business loans to MFIs that serve deeply impoverished rural women who often struggle to survive on just $1.00 a day. ADVERTISEMENT

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Effective immediately, MicroCredit Enterprises will give special consideration to MFIs who operate comprehensive social service programs, such as women's empowerment, health education or business training for micro-entrepreneurs, and who have accountable boards of directors who respond to local community needs.

Further, MFIs with a track record of lowering interest rates to impoverished client-borrowers or those who lower interest rates to poor client-borrowers will be considered more favorably by MicroCredit Enterprises.

Concurrent with the new eligibility criteria, MicroCredit Enterprises today also launched an interactive internet loan application in English, Spanish and French. "This online loan application will save MFIs time, expense and, most of all, unnecessary delays in getting their loan applications submitted and reviewed," observed SVP for Portfolio Management, Kyle R. Salyer. "We hope other MFI lenders will become Cooperating Lenders as well." The new loan application is at http://www.mcenterprises.org/mfi.aspx.

Ms. Maya Chorengel, President of the Dignity Fund (http://dignityfund.com/), and Ms. Christina A. Jennings, Executive Director of the Katalysis Bootstrap Fund (http://www.katalysis.org/), CEOs of two notable microfinance funds, have been appointed to serve as advisors to the MicroCredit Enterprises Loan Committee. Prior to joining the Dignity Fund, Maya Chorengel was a Vice President with Warburg Pincus, an associate in the Investment Banking Division of Morgan Stanley Asia and an analyst at James D. Wolfensohn, Inc., an investment bank. Prior to joining Katalysis, Christina Jennings was Loan Fund Manager for the NICA Fund, a community development loan fund providing capital to microfinance organizations in Nicaragua. Like MicroCredit Enterprises, both funds make loans to MFIs serving extremely impoverished women entrepreneurs.

"MicroCredit Enterprises is committed to open source collaborations with mission-aligned microfinance organizations. Transparent edibility and lending criteria, the online loan application available for use by other lenders, the participation of Dignity Fund and Katalysis Bootstrap Fund on the MicroCredit Enterprises Loan Committee are everyday working examples," stated MCE CEO, Jonathan C. Lewis.

About MicroCredit Enterprises

Based in Davis, California, MicroCredit Enterprises is an innovative, not-for-profit, anti-poverty venture which leverages private capital to make tiny business loans to impoverished people, mostly women, in developing countries. MicroCredit Enterprises uses the collateral assets of individuals and institutions to borrow debt capital in the United States that is channeled through overseas, locally-run, non-governmental microfinance organizations. The impoverished loan recipients generally have no credit history, no collateral and no formal education, but with microloans, they create and build home-based businesses. MicroCredit Enterprises' economic development objective is to reverse the cycle of poverty in economically distressed countries using the tools of the marketplace to provide self-help opportunities to millions of impoverished women and their families. On the Net: http://mcenterprises.org.

CONTACT:

Jesse Waters

DuDell & Associates, Inc.

510-338-0560

# # #

MicroCredit Enterprises

Jesse Waters

510-338-0560

E-mail Information
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