Micro-finance

King’s Bruton was lucky enough to receive a gift from the Golden Bottle Trust to give King’s students experience of micro-financing. The term micro-financing (or micro-Credit) is the term used to describe the business process of providing small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries throughout the world.  Typically such entrepreneurs do not have access to other forms of funding because of the lack of financial institutions where they live, or their own lack of collateral.

Each boarding house now runs a micro-finance team.  They had a starting fund of £350 to invest to entrepreneurs in the developing world through the charity Kiva.  Kiva introduces individuals and project lenders, chooses approved financial intermediaries in the borrowers’ countries, facilitates payments and reports on the progress of different initiatives, including the repayment of loans. Each boarding house team selects projects and entrepreneurs, makes loans and then monitors the repayment of those loans.  They must mitigate the impact of an entrepreneur defaulting on a loan by spreading their house’s risk across several projects.  As loans are repaid the funds are re-invested in new projects.

For more information on Kiva and to follow the success of the King’s teams please check

the Kiva website on www.kiva.org.