In a number of European countries microfinance evolved from informal beginnings during the eighteenth and nineteenth …, microfinance meant financial intermediation between microsavings and microcredit, and was powered by intermediation. Legal … century when microfinance became part of the formal banking sector. In Germany, the former microfinance institutions now …

In November 2009, EIF issued a working paper on the European microfinance market. In this study, we found that there … are wide spectra of final beneficiaries and intermediaries and concluded that there is no common microfinance business … model in Europe. While our findings suggested that the microfinance market is immature and fragmented, they also pointed to …

with a special focus on micro enterprises and Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). Finally, the study reviews selected … the extremely fragmented European economy and in the absence of a commonly accepted microfinance business model, the … findings confirm the positive impact of microfinance on both poverty and social exclusion which currently constitute major …