This guide is designed to provide guidance to an assessor on how to conduct a consumer protection assessment for an microfinance institution and thoroughly evaluate the MFI’s implementation of the client protection principles. It can either be used by microfinance institutions to assess their own performance or the assessment can be undertaken by an independent Smart-certified assessor. The guide leads the assessor through a step-by-step process of collecting the information and documents necessary to evaluate a microfinance institution’s client protection practices as well as offering advice on how to evaluate this information against the set of indicators for each principle, which are also included.

The Guide assists in:

• Identifying the types of documents that will need to be reviewed and the types of people who will need to be interviewed;
• Helping microfinance institutions analyze this documentation and evaluate their practices with respect to the Client Protection Principles;
• Giving recommendations on how to identify the institution’s areas of opportunity for enhancing client protection.

The companion "Resources" piece offers a selection of important recommendations, suggested questions, and resources for assessors.

Performing an institutional assessment is a relatively rigorous process that requires significant staff participation and approximately 3-5 days of work. If you plan to undertake the self assessment, please email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and we will support you as possible.

The guide is one of two assessment tools available from The Smart Campaign. To learn more about these options, click here »

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