Standards in microfinance

As the microfinance sector has been rapidly developing in Russia, increasing attention has been paid to analyzing the activities of microfinance organizations. The RMC is taking the lead in developing standards for assessing microfinance organizations, as traditional standards for judging financial institutions and other similar organizations cannot easily be applied to microfinance organizations. When traditional standards are applied to microfinance, it results in a distortion of the financial status of MFIs and in an inaccurate comparison of institutions. In an effort to address this issue, the RMC has brought Russian microfinance professionals together to develop generally accepted definitions of financial terms and parameters of activity for microfinance in Russia. The resulting standards will make analysis of MFIs more comprehensive and clear, accounting will become more transparent, and efforts to compare MFIs will be simplified. Clear and transparent reports are especially important for MFIs that aspire to achieve self-sustainability and to find commercial sources of financing to ensure further development.

The RMC's Standards Working Group meets several times a year and includes representatives of different types of microfinance organizations working in Russia. This subsection will contain the information on all meerings of the standards working group as well as th list of experts actively participating and contributing to implementation and development of Benchmarking and National Performance Standards within the Russian Microfinance Sector