Microfinance Editing and Proofreading Services

Microfinance operates where the gap between what a document says and what a borrower understands is widest. A loan officer explains terms verbally, often in a language other than the one the agreement is printed in, to a client who may have limited literacy and no prior experience of formal credit. Whatever the contract states, the borrower's understanding is formed in that conversation — and the sector's periodic crises have almost always followed from clients not grasping what they had agreed to, particularly the true cost and the consequences of group liability.

We edit what microfinance institutions and their funders produce — client-facing loan explanations and simplified agreements, pricing and effective interest rate disclosures, group lending and joint liability explanations, loan officer scripts and training material, client protection policies and codes of conduct, savings and insurance product documentation, arrears and recovery procedures, social performance and client outcome reports, investor and development finance institution reporting, funding applications and concessional finance proposals, board and governance documentation, and impact evaluations and research publications. Our editors work on the English source material that becomes local-language versions, and we check that the source is clean enough to translate accurately.

Pricing disclosure is where this sector's reputation is decided. A loan quoted as "2% per month, plus a small processing fee, repaid weekly" can carry an effective annual cost several times the headline, because the flat rate is charged on the original amount while the balance falls with each repayment. Clients cannot be expected to work that out, and institutions that rely on them not doing so are storing up a crisis. We write these disclosures so the total amount repayable is stated in currency before anything else — this is the number a client can understand and compare — so the repayment schedule shows every instalment with a running balance, so all compulsory costs including savings requirements, insurance and fees are inside the quoted figure rather than beside it, and so the comparison the client will inevitably make against an informal lender is made honestly rather than avoided. Institutions that price transparently lose some volume and almost never lose it to a competitor with better terms.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including client data, board papers and funder reporting. We are editors rather than financial or regulatory advisers, and product terms must be settled by your own management and comply with local law. What we can do is make the writing plain, respectful and accurate at the source, which is where every translated version inherits its clarity or its problems.