Microfinance

In Kyle’s corpus, microfinance appears through John Hoffmire, the Saïd Business School (Oxford) faculty member focused on employee ownership and impact investing. Hoffmire led the first sale of shares for a microfinance bank to an ESOP — at K-REP in Kenya — making microfinance one of the threads in his market-driven, anti-poverty work. It is also flagged as a tag on his page alongside his family microfinance projects referenced in the prep notes for Kyle’s 2014 Oxford conversation with him.

Context: Microfinance is the provision of small loans, savings, and other financial services to low-income individuals and entrepreneurs who lack access to conventional banking — a model popularized by Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Notably, Hoffmire’s K-REP example combines microfinance with Employee Ownership, applying an ESOP structure to a microfinance institution itself.

Where this appears

• John Hoffmire — led the first ESOP share sale at the K-REP microfinance bank in Kenya; microfinance is a tag and family-project thread on his page.