Despite the remarkable impact of microfinance institutions around the world, there are still over 400 million families in need of financial services. One of the factors inhibiting microfinance institutions from extending their reach is the lack of a flexible, cost-effective technology infrastructure that will allow them to expand their operations to provide loans to more people and to develop new products and services.

There exist a number of off-the-shelf MIS (Management Information Systems) available today, however just half of all microfinance institutions around the world have implemented automated systems. The rest are still using Excel-based or manual systems to manage their portfolio and client information, severely hindering their efficiency and capacity to support growing numbers of clients. Those that do invest in technology spend duplicative resources on custom-built systems that are extremely costly and difficult to maintain.

Although regional differences and variations in financial models exist and must be accommodated in the automated information systems, a large portion of the functionality required is common to the vast majority of MFIs. This means that money is being spent by MFIs around the world to develop the same functionality over and over again – money that can be better spent to directly benefit the poor.

Mifos provides a solution to this problem. By building world-class microfinance software using open source technology, the common functionality in areas such as management and reporting can be standardized and shared by everyone. Innovations in microfinance technology can be scaled. Modifications can be developed in partnership with others in the microfinance world, rapidly increasing the ability of MFIs to extend their outreach to those in need.