Measuring Microfinance Impact in the EU.

Policy Recommendations for Financial and Social Inclusion

(Memi)

October 2016 – December 2019

Funded by
EIB-University Research Sponsorship – European Investment Bank  

The project «Measuring Microfinance Impact in the EU. Policy Recommendations for Financial and Social Inclusion (Memi)» is a three-year research project financed by the European Investment Bank (EIB) Institute under the EIB University Research Sponsorship call for proposals on the «Impact of microfinance on financial and social inclusion in Europe». The project is supervised by the European Investment Fund (EIF).

The main aim of the research is to assess the impact of microfinance in Europe, focussing in particular on financial and social exclusion and on the creation of income and job opportunities.

The main tool is the Social Return On Investment (SROI) used to quantify and measure the impact of microfinance in the case studies analysed. The impact generated by microfinance activities (translated into a monetary value) is therefore compared to the amount of resources invested to generate it, to quantify the social return per unit of money invested. The SROI is useful to explain what activities / results drive impact and allows comparison between different microfinance models and different welfare tools.