 Even in normal times, people with very low income or wealth have hardly any access to basic financial services. Commercial banks have little to gain from offering such services to them; there is an elevated risk of loan losses (since the poor lack collateral) and it is costly to administer a large amount of very small loans (Armendáriz &amp; Morduch 2010). Moreover, there will likely be cases where some bank officers discriminate against underprivileged groups, even where extensive legal protection is in place. An initiative that seeks to remedy these problems is “microfinance”, that is, the extension of financial services, such as lending and saving, to poor people who are otherwise “unbanked”. The initiative started in some of the poorest countries of the world, such as Bangladesh and India.