India’s SKS went public yesterday, and we’re all waiting to see what will happen. Initial public offerings (IPOs) have a rather infamous history in the microfinance industry. The Banco Compartamos IPO set off a flurry of controversy, and ended up casting a lasting pall over the industry. Will this IPO reignite the backlash over high interest rates and “profiting from the poor?” Only time will tell.

While we wait to see how this shakes out, we’ll first say that we believe that commercial capital – including IPOs – have an important role to play in increasing access to finance for low income people in the developing world. They are part of an equation. Certainly, the most commercially oriented microfinance institutions will probably not be the most socially-oriented, but when
[Published in NonProfitBlogs - Read the original article]