Philippines

Despite a decades-long economic expansion, one of every three residents of the Philippines live in poverty. Now more than ever, with economic growth slowing, the country needs to take steps to reduce its poverty rate and highly unequal distribution of wealth.

Mercy Corps is helping address the challenge through the MAXIS Program, which develops and delivers innovative financial products and services to low-income populations once considered "unbankable."

Mercy Corps has launched and expanded several dozen microfinance institutions in places such as Mongolia, Afghanistan and Bosnia. In Indonesia and the Philippines, however, we recognized that the missing link was not more retail-oriented MFIs, but correspondent banking services that would augment the ability of retail MFIs to deliver meaningful, innovative products and services to their customers.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mercy Corps created MAXIS (Maximizing Access to Innovative Financial Services for All).

In the Philippines, Mercy Corps hopes to use the MAXIS model to:

Provide technical assistance and support technological innovation throughout the microfinance sector by extending the work of the Microfinance Innovation Center for Resources and Alternatives (MICRA). MICRA, established by Mercy Corps in 2006, is an Indonesian foundation that provides technical assistance, product development assistance, and research and ratings to MFIs.

Identify opportunities to create large-scale financing models, such as Mercy Corps' Bank Andara in Indonesia, to expand microfinance. Bank Andara is an Indonesian commercial wholesale bank designed to enable thousands of MFIs in Indonesia to provide diversified products beyond microloans — including microinsurance and mobile phone banking — to millions of people living in poverty.

Advance a "pro-poor" strategy within the microfinance sector by offering the perspective of the underserved and unserved population and the importance of tying financial products into community-development efforts.