Origins and Philosophy

PlaNet Finance China, the representative office of PlaNet Finance in Beijing, is a non-profit and tax-exempt organization that works for sustainable social and economic development in China by supporting and promoting the microfinance sector. PlaNet Finance China has been involved in the Chinese microfinance sector since 2003. Thanks to its mixture of highly motivated Chinese and international staff, the organization implements activities in rural and urban China, and has served local microfinance programs and financial institutions in more than 20 Chinese provinces and cities. As of July 2008, PlaNet Finance China has begun working in conjunction with our industry veteran experts based at the PlaNet Finance Asia technical hub in the Philippines.

We seek to strengthen microfinance delivery in two ways. First, to help grow the small MFIs (microfinance institutions) that are trying to get loan services to farmers and entrepreneurs in the central and western areas of China; and second, to assist existing regulated financial institutions to efficiently extend their loan portfolio to small loans, using best practice credit and risk management strategies and technologies.

In our Microfinance Plus work, we try to bring donor resources to poverty-stricken areas to address certain weaknesses (eg., access to market information, lack of coping mechanisms for agriculture in a changing climate, lack of micro-entrepreneur training resources, etc.) even while working to improve and diversify the performance of the local microfinance organization with our technical services. Under conditions of increasing urbanization in Western China, we are facilitating training on individual lending which can complement the older group-lending models.