The Systematic Risk of the Best-Performing Microfinance Institutions

This book empirically examines the systematic risk of the best-performing microfinance institutions to the global and domestic markets. The primary purpose for conducting this research is to observe whether the resilience of the microfinance industry has remained correspondingly intact during the period of the financial crisis, as it did formerly. The empirical results indicate that these MFIs show statistically significant and positive correlation to the global and domestic capital markets. During the financial crisis, MFIs demonstrated a greater sensitivity to international capital markets movements than those of emerging-market commercial banks - indicating a higher systematic risk. However, the resilience of MFIs to the global and domestic market movements is diminishing, at least in regard to the best-performing institutions, and thus it is questionable whether investors would yield any portfolio diversification benefits from such investments.