The World’s Top Microfinance Institutions

Forbes: The World's Top Microfinance Institutions

Microfinance has become a buzzword of the decade, raising the provocative notion that even philanthropy aimed at alleviating poverty can be profitable to institutional and individual investors. Instead of merely writing a check (then writing it off), why not make a tidy profit from a short-term, high-interest loan, most for under $200, so that a Mexican seamstress may buy a new sewing machine? Or so a Moroccan farmer can buy chickens so he may sell more eggs? Billionaires, global leaders and Nobel Prize recipients are hailing these direct loans to uncollateralized would-be entrepreneurs as a way to lift them out of poverty while creating self-sustaining businesses.

That promise has had a magnetic effect on private capital sources. Microfinance funding from private investors more than tripled to $2 billion in 2006. The field has attracted sterling banks and fund managers, including Citigroup (nyse: C – news – people ), blue-chip venture capitalists like Sequoia Capital, tycoons like eBay (nasdaq: EBAY – news – people ) founder Pierre Omidyar and Oscar-winning screen stars such as Robert Duvall–they've all joined the chase for returns in microfinance. Today, there are upward of 12,000 microfinance institutions issuing loans.

To help investors parse them, Forbes compiled its first-ever list of the Top Microfinance Institutions. …

Here is the listing to the Top 50.