The Impact of Innovation and Technology on Microfinance Sustainable Governance

Technical or social innovation, concerning also the creation and commercialization of new products, strategies and management, has a deep actual - and especially trendy - impact on microfinance institutions (MFIs), contributing to reshape their business model, with an impact on their overall risk profile. Innovation is mostly an opportunity even for MF risk mitigation, considering its pervasive impact on risk factors. This original analysis is addressing, in a multidisciplinary and innovative comprehensive way, apparently weakly related topics such as MF governance, and IT issues, within recessionary cycles. This hardly investigated frontier faces key trendy issues, which are likely to deeply reengineer the relationship among different stakeholders, as it has already happened, on a different and more sophisticated scale, with traditional banking. To the extent that technology (with access to Internet, social networks, cashless electronic payments, etc.) reshapes the equilibriums among different stakeholders, it is likely to have important – albeit under-investigated - corporate governance consequences, softening the conflicts of interest among stakeholders and reinforcing the business model, making it more resilient during recessions, with positive externalities on both sustainability and outreach.