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"The duty of responsible stewardship is very clear, a concept that can be equated to the notions of trust and trusteeship in today’s international legal terminology. The obligation to maintain the highest level of integrity in the management of donated resources, and of the institutions benefiting from them, is grounded in our faith."

His Highness the
Aga Khan, Conference on Indigenous Philanthropy, Islamabad, Pakistan (21 October 2000)

Microfinance and Micro-insurance

The Microinsurance Initiative is intended to address the need to protect poor people from the often catastrophic effects of economic hardships such as natural disasters, hospitalisation, or a death in the family.Operating across a range of entities from small savings and microcredit organizations to major commercial banks and insurance companies listed on national stock exchanges, AKDN institutions in Pakistan have provided financial services for more than 60 years.

The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) laid the foundations of the microfinance sector in the country in 1982, beginning in the Northern Areas and Chitral. By 2000 a total of over US$ 8 million had been saved by members of more than 3,260 village organizations, with more than US$ 28 million disbursed since the inception of AKRSP.

The First MicroFinanceBank Ltd. of Pakistan (FMFB-P) started operations in March 2002 as the first microfinance bank licensed under the regulatory framework of the Microfinance Institutions Ordinance 2001. It initially took over the credit and savings activity of AKRSP, and began a programme of urban microcredit in Rawalpindi and Karachi in 2002. Since then, the Bank has gradually expanded to over 80 branches/units in both rural and urban areas of the country. Approximately one-third of its borrowers and staff are women. The bank offers a number of services ranging from electronic fund transfers to housing improvement loans in its rural branches.

The Microinsurance Initiative is intended to address the need to protect poor people from the often catastrophic effects of economic hardships such as natural disasters, hospitalisation, or a death in the family. Less than three percent of people in the world’s 100 poorest countries have any type of insurance to protect them from financial shock.

Funded by a grant of $5.5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the five-year initiative is striving to develop a replicable model for microinsurance that will be viable and financially sustainable in multiple socio-economic and cultural contexts.

FMiA provides innovative life and health microinsurance products that are carefully tailored to the needs of poor families. It is working in partnership with New Jubilee Life, a subsidiary of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) and one of Pakistan’s leading insurance companies, as its principal insurer.