Word: microcredit
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...proposed megabank mergers may be getting all the press, but there is also banking news in the startling success of microbanks around the world. More than 7,000 microcredit institutions offer tiny loans (averaging about $100) to destitute people to generate income through self-employment. The results are higher incomes, better health and better school attendance. Microbanking now functions on a large scale. For example, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has more than 2 million borrowers, most of them village women, in one of the world's poorest countries. Yet the on-time repayment rate is 98%. In the microbanks...