Organizations that provide financial services to the poor face significant challenges.  The poor are vulnerable to health crises, economic shocks and changes in business environments that can leave them without the resources to pay loan installments or maintain savings.

However, by integrating complementary services that improve families’ health practices, financial management and business acumen, organizations can strengthen their own:

• Social performance, by
• more effectively translating their mission into practice;
• reaching target clients;
• better meeting the needs of target clients; and
• achieving positive impacts on the lives of clients and their families.
• Financial and institutional performance, by

• enhancing clients’ capacity to repay loans and accumulate savings;

• differentiating themselves in the market to attract and retain clients;
  

• diversifying their portfolios by helping clients become better consumers of and utilize a broader range of financial services; and

• reducing risk to their portfolio by helping their clients remain healthy.

Improving the double—financial and social—bottom line

An impact study conducted in Ghana demonstrated the benefits that integrated services can yield for implementing organizations.  In 1997, the Lower Pra Rural Bank had been offering Credit with Education for four years. At that time, the program had an operating self-sufficiency ratio of 81 percent, meaning that the interest paid by borrowers covered 81 percent of the bank’s costs of delivering Credit with Education as one of several services. With disciplined integration, the organization grew both its portfolio and clientele for Credit with Education and by June 2000, the Lower Pra Rural Bank’s Credit with Education service had achieved operating self-sufficiency of 130 percent.  Thus the Credit with Education service was generating more than enough interest revenue to cover its cost of delivery in rural areas.

CRECER, a Credit with Education provider in Bolivia, also demonstrates the success organizations can achieve through disciplined integration of service delivery. CRECER has offered integrated services since 1990.  In 1999, it was one of three institutions profiled in "The Microcredit Summit's Challenge: Working Towards Institutional Financial Self-Sufficiency While Maintaining a Commitment to Serving the Poorest Families" (1999). CRECER's efficiency and sustainability ratios were comparable to or better than organizations that offered little or no education.   In 2004, the Inter-American Development Bank also recognized CRECER as the best unregulated microfinance institution in the Americas.