Question: Does transformation from an NGO to a regulated MFI represent mission drift away from working with very poor clients?

Clare Wavamunno: Okay, the client base will shift but the focus will not shift. So we want all of our current clients to come and begin saving with us rather then to take their savings to another commercial bank. So, that in itself answers the question that our clients remain the low income people. However, when we open the door to the public and someone comes in we should not say, go away, you don't look poor enough. So…we'll just see what happens. But the fact is that since you now have a license you will have a word on [the end of] your name to say FINCA MDI, which will tell the public that you're allowed to take savings of the public.

Secondly, we've had a relationship with our clients for so long and they want the product, they want to be able to stay with us. I hope and pray that they will not now go to another institution. Credit will be provided depending on the range of the products that we now have and again we hope that our clients will remain with us, those who have been going away perhaps to another institution that gives bigger loans can have an option to stay with us because now you are not sticking to the previous FINCA, what did they call it? FINCA Village Bank Loan, product, you now have bigger and more flexible loans. So that also entices them to stay. However it doesn't stop the others from coming….

Xavier Reille: Well, we can find many bad examples but there are also good examples, you may know CARD Bank in the Philippines has a very strong social focus, lending only to poor women…. They transformed into a rural bank in the Philippines and they choose to offer thirty percent of the share to the clients through a kind of client association. So I'm not sure this is the base mechanism, because there are also some issues… of conflict of interest. But that the way they have dealt with the issue and….the governance of the organization is still with people who really believe in the mission. They have picked their board members very carefully and they have retained the NGO as a regional controlling chair. So, they have kind of controlled the organization through the share of the NGO and through the staff association.

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