By Marguerite Robinson. Examines many financial institutions, with a special emphasis on Indonesia — the first country to develop profitable micro-finance on a large scale and home to the world’s oldest and largest commercial micro-finance institutions — particularly, the Bank Rakyat, Indonesia’s micro-banking system, which in the mid-1980s was transformed from a failed subsidized credit program to a nationwide commercial financial intermediary that now profitably provides micro-finance services–savings and credit–to more than 20 million people. Read more.