Article: Microfinance boom excludes the very poorest

When Muhammad Yunus set up his Grameen Bank for microcredit in Bangladesh in 1976, his aim was to give people at the lowest level of society the chance to rise above the abject poverty in which they were living. "Banking the unbankable" was the motto: even those without any collateral had the chance to obtain a loan. Thirty years later, micro-finance is a global success story. But are those most in need being left by the wayside?