Microfinance in The United States and Canada
In Canada and the US, microfinance organizations target marginalized populations unable to access mainstream bank financing. Close to 8% of Americans are unbanked, meaning around 9 million are without any kind of bank account or formal financial services. Most of these institutions are structured as nonprofit organizations. Microfinance in the U.S. context is defined as the extension of credit up to $35,000. In Canada, CRA guidelines restrict microfinance loans to a maximum of $25,000. The average microfinance loan size in the US is US$9,732, ten times the size of an average microfinance loan in developing countries (US$973).
Read more about this topic: Microfinance
Famous quotes containing the words united, states and/or canada:
“We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve; and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Institutions of higher education in the United States are products of Western society in which masculine values like an orientation toward achievement and objectivity are valued over cooperation, connectedness and subjectivity.”
—Yolanda Moses (b. 1946)
“I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)