2005 was designated as the ’Year of Microcredit’ by the United Nations, a title meant to raise awareness of the need to build inclusive financial sectors and strengthen the powerful, but often untapped, entrepreneurial spirit existing in communities around the world. Microfinance is generally accepted as one of the most successful poverty alleviation strategies tried in recent decades, a claim bolstered by a recent World Bank report that shows a strong correlation between lack of financial access and low incomes.

Now that 2005 is ending, it’s worth asking what interesting outcomes were produced over the past year. Is the microfinance sector rapidly scaling? How interested are larger commercial banks in providing such services? How much money is being invested? To answer these questions, I searched through more than 100 microfinance stories that appeared in our Newsroom over the past year. Although not comprehensive in their scope, taken together these stories strongly indicate that the ‘Year of Microcredit’ may well be remembered as the tipping point when providing financial services to the poor went from a charitable activity to a core investment strategy for both the financial and philanthropic sectors.