Where are They Now? Learning from the Progress of Seven Microfinance Deposit–-Taking Institutions from 1996-–2003

In 1996, GTZ studied seven successful deposit-taking institutions as part of the CGAP Working Group on Savings Mobilization. The institutions studied included BAAC (Thailand), BRI-Microbanking Division (formerly known as the Unit Desa System, Indonesia), Banco Caja Social (Colombia), Centenary (Uganda), CVECA (Mali), FECECAM (Benin), and RPB (now One Network Bank or ONB, in the Philippines). The study determined that the key to significant growth in poor people’s savings is through providing access to deposit services specifically designed for them. Seven years later, in 2003, CGAP revisited these institutions to examine their progress and to determine whether they continued to be successful based on standard measures of financial and social performance.