How Values Create Value: Social Capital in Microfinance - The Case of the Philippines

Values are to a society what character is to a person: it reveals his true inner self, yet is difficult to describe in exact terms. Moreover, a person's character may show in his actions in various, sometimes contradictory ways so that it may be difficult to induce a person's character from his deeds. Asian values, elusive as they are, have been regarded as a cause of the economic rise of a number of Asian countries. Yet some decades earlier, Confucian values were quoted as a cause of underdevelopment of some Asian countries. Has the recent financial crisis also been due to them, in some way, or do we have to wait for economic recovery in order to attribute that to Confucian values? Max Weber, who first studied the impact of values on economic development, was more careful when he presented the results of his research. The Spirit of Capitalism is congruent with the rise of the Protestant Ethic, he said; but he claimed no causal relationship. --

Microinsurance in the Philippines : Policy and Regulatory Issues and Challenges

This study assesses the state of micro-insurance in the country, identifies the players and their performance, and the challenges facing micro-insurance development. The term micro pertains to the capacity of a program to handle the small, sometime irregular cash flows of poor households, who have been excluded in the commercial insurance system for a variety of reasons. Micro-insurance products, specifically designed with the poor in mind, will help mitigate risks and reduce the vulnerability of poor households. The most prominent forms of micro-insurance are life insurance and health insurance (carried out as part of an overall health care package that links the health insurance to a health facility), which have been designed to be responsive to the need of poor households. The paper reports 17 players in the emerging micro-insurance industry, consisting of 12 cooperatives, three NGOs/MFIs, and two transport associations that are offering home-made micro-insurance. These home-made microinsurance products continue to be provided despite their actuarial weaknesses and lack of financial capacity of the providers because of very strong demand from their membership for such financial products. Given their advantages over commercial insurance companies, the mutual benefit associations (MBAs) are the usual vehicles of micro-insurance programs. In 2004, 18 MBAs were registered with the Insurance Commission (IC) with accumulated assets of PhP14.8 billion. Members equity totaled PhP4.25 billion. The paper calls attention to the institutional, policy and regulatory issues and challenges facing micro-insurance.micro-insurance, risk protection services, insurance industry, life insurance, mutual benefit associations, social protection, micro-finance institutions, micro-insurance delivery

How values create value Social capital in microfinance; the case of the Philippines

Der vorliegende Beitrag befasst sich, anhand des Beispiels der Philippinen, mit sozialem Kapital bei der Mikrofinanzierung. Zunaechst gehen die Autoren auf soziales Kapital als normativen Bezugsrahmen ein. Soziales Kapital wird hier als ein gemeinsames normatives System einer Gruppe oder Organisation begriffen, das der Faehigkeit der Menschen dient, zusammenzuarbeiten und Resultate zu erzielen, die im Interesse der Gruppe oder Organisation sind. Danach wird untersucht, wie sich soziales Kapital bei der Mikrofinanzierung messen laesst. Es werden Zahlungsfaehigkeit, Nachhaltigkeit und Verbreitung in allen Bevoelkerungssegmenten als Kriterien genannt. Im zweiten Kapitel werden Beispiele von negativem und positivem sozialen Kapital aufgezeigt. In Kapitel drei wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob das erfolgreiche Beispiel der Grameen Bank in Bangladesh auf andere Laender und Bereiche uebertragen werden kann. Dies wird abschliessend fuer das Beispiel der Philippinen konkretisiert. (ICD)German title: Wie Werte Wert schaffen: soziales Kapital bei der Mikrofinanzierung; der Fall der PhilippinenAvailable from http://www.uni-koeln.de/ew-fak/aef/PDFnew/S B08 %20Microfinance%20in%20the%20Philippines%20-%20Working%20Paper.pdf / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman