The Business Case of Adding Health Protection to Microfinance

Based on the experiences of Freedom from Hunger and its microfinance institution (MFI) partners in the Gates-funded Microfinance and Health Protection (MAHP) initiative, this paper documents the impact that health protection products can have on the financial performance of MFIs. In 2006, Freedom from Hunger set out with five MFIs—Bandhan (India), CARD (Philippines), CRECER (Bolivia), PADME (Bénin) and RCPB (Burkina Faso)—to explore whether it was possible to design and offer health-related products and services that could have a positive social impact for clients while also being practical, cost-effective and even profitable for MFIs.