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Over the last 20 years, valuable lessons have been learnt as to why poor people need financial services and what product features they value. These insights have encouraged policy makers, regulators, providers and others to re-examine what more can be done to ensure that a yet larger group of poor people obtain better access to financial services. Growing experience and successes have accelerated the emergence of new providers of finance as well as products and technologies, such as branchless banking and weather linked insurance. For example, a CGAP study noted that $10 billion additional foreign capital has been invested in microfinance in just the last four years. However, rapid scale up and greater scrutiny by policy makers, the media and other analysts have also increased criticism of the often exaggerated claims made by some microfinance enthusiasts.

While there are raging debates about the impact of microfinance, there is an emerging consensus that:

• Effective ongoing access to affordable and appropriate financial services (not just microcredit) improve the ability of poor families to seek and seize economic opportunities, including building micro businesses, deal with internal and external shocks and protect their livelihoods;
• The job is far from done – while millions have acquired access and greater choice of financial services, more than 2 billion adults still lack access to safe and appropriate financial services.

The Microfinance Club UK provides a forum for all individuals interested in microfinance (irrespective of their skills, backgrounds and current role) to hear, debate and influence the emerging issues in microfinance and achieve the club credo to learn, exchange, network and act.