Microcredits, a history linked to inclusive finance
Who does not know today the existence of microcredits , what they consist of or how to apply for them ... However, the birth of this form of financing is not just 40 years old, we will tell you its story.
The birth of microcredits
Microcredits were born thanks to an initiative of Muhammad Yunnus , a Bangladeshi professor with a doctorate in economics in the United States, in the 1970s. Yunnus set out to help people excluded from the traditional financial system in taking out bank loans that would allow them to develop an initiative business, and began with his country of origin.
The people that Yunnus decided to help by granting financing would not have obtained it in any other way in their country, since they were disadvantaged people, with little or no economic resources, and convinced of setting up a small business that would allow them to evolve. In short, an unattractive cover letter for a traditional bank, which obviously closed its doors to this type of entrepreneur.
The microcredits created by Yunnus were a breath of fresh air for all those people who yearned to start an activity on their own to be able to get out of their precarious situation. The money loans contemplated small amounts with a very low interest and did not require collateral. Such was the success of this initiative, on a social and economic level, that Yunnus created, in 1976, the Graamen Bank , a financial institution dedicated precisely to granting financing in the form of microcredits to people at risk of social exclusion.
Muhammad Yunnus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
The evolution of mini-credits: fast online loans
The idea of Yunnus opened a whole range of possibilities to those who needed financing in small amounts, immediately and without having to respond with large guarantees or a flourishing economic situation. And not only in the case of entrepreneurs who lived in impoverished countries, but of any consumer who needed money here and now, anywhere in the world.
This is how the concept of microcredit spread and evolved to derive in what we currently know as online microcredits , loans that by their nature and objectives are far from the so-called "inclusive finance" , within which the Yunnus microcredits are framed, but they undoubtedly respond to the same need, that of getting money when traditional banking turns its back on you for not going through an optimal financial situation.