VISION & VALUES

At Unitus, we believe in the inherent value of every global citizen. We see the potential of all individuals to change their world for the better, given the opportunity.

The World Bank estimates that more than 2.5 billion people live on $2 a day or less. In India, 76 percent of the population lives below this line; the total is 73 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. The persistence of this extreme poverty is a structural and moral failure to recognize the fundamental promise of nearly half of the world’s population.

We believe we can transform the future for millions of the world’s least fortunate by scaling up highly leveraged, market-based approaches to fighting poverty using the power of microfinance. Once the working poor are no longer excluded from the resources and opportunities of the world’s financial markets, they are empowered to realize their full potential, building stronger families, communities, and lives.

Accelerating Growth in High-Need Regions

We believe that accelerating the growth of MFIs is essential to broad-scale poverty alleviation. That’s why Unitus seeks out and partners with microfinance institutions (MFIs) in areas where poverty is highly concentrated and there are large populations in need of microfinance services.

By empowering the rapid growth of MFIs in these emerging markets, we believe we can quickly help hundreds of thousands of poor families and create the demonstration effect needed to attract large-scale investments in order to meet the tremendous global demand for microfinance.

The Unitus portfolio currently reaches more than 8 million families through 24 partners in India and Southeast Asia, East Africa, Mexico, and South America.

> Read more about accelerating the growth of MFIs

Sparking Innovation and Efficiency in the Field of Microfinance

Unitus believes it is essential to promote new and more cost-effective ways of serving greater volumes of the world’s working poor. Fostering innovation and maximizing efficiency are key drivers in lowering the cost to serve microfinance clients and improving the financial products developed for them.

Due to the geographically far-flung and labor-intensive nature of most rural banking—as well as the nascent state of the industry—microfinance has historically been characterized by high-cost service delivery, limited product selection, and operational inefficiencies. We work closely with our portfolio of partners and others in the microfinance industry to analyze data and develop action steps that help improve operational efficiency. This enables MFIs to lower costs and provide broader distribution of microfinance services.

To spark innovation, Unitus works across several fronts:

• Conducting “innovation workshops” designed to pinpoint new ways for our partners to serve more micro-entrepreneurs, more efficiently.

• Spurring the development of cutting-edge technology and advisory services in order to meet the needs of the working poor and improve their lives.
• Encouraging and developing concepts for entirely new businesses designed to serve the poor.
  
  

> Learn more about innovation and efficiency in microfinance