Microfinance is very hard to get right. It requires a lot of supervision, a large network of loan officers, and intricate structuring of the terms in order to a

Microfinance is very hard to get right. It requires a lot of supervision, a large network of loan officers, and intricate structuring of the terms in order to align incentives. Moreover, the loans are capacity constrained, the risk is high, takes tons of work, a lot of local knowledge, etc. All in all, it's almost impossible for microfinance loans to work for the lender. As a charity, it works okay, but if you want to earn yield, forget about it. There's tons of really amazing opportunities in EM, but you can't exploit them by sitting at your desk. Or rather, those that can have probably already been exploited.