Emulating Mortgages for the Benefit of the Poor: Financial Innovations by Mahila Housing Trust

This report illustrates the value created through the innovative loan product and its enabling proceedings. It also highlights how the new loan product differs from traditional consumer and mortgage loans, why MHT—in close partnership with various affiliated organizations, especially credit cooperatives—invented it, and how the partners’ unique position in the housing value chain enabled the innovation. We have two key objectives: firstly, to illustrate the challenges in the delivery of the collateralized housing loans in order to allow policy makers to remove undue barriers; and, secondly, to share the loan proceedings with other potential lenders in order to enable them to replicate the innovative approach.