Microfinance is a house with many rooms, all representing a certain mix of expectations, objectives and methodologies. What the Alliance sets out to accomplish is to build a room that gives proper attention to customer rights and invites in actors from other rooms, who are interested in getting back to the basics of the industry: fair treatment of all stakeholders.

This new room will be furnished with a handful of initial concerns and will develop from there, based on what ethically concerned actors aspire to achieve. It is conceivable that over time some distinct products will be developed in that room, such as some form of ethical certification for the actors involved. These will then be offered to the microfinance industry at large. It can be taken for granted that not all actors will feel obliged to consent: the purpose is merely to bring together those that are concerned and develop the necessary tools to pursue their concerns in day-to-day practice.

The Alliance does not currently aim for the status of a formal institution with a board, management, staff, offices, multi-year programs and budgets and the like. Consequently, it does not have a formal membership at present. It is simply a virtual community of persons and organizations that want to support customer rights and can offer the industry at large ways and means to go about it. In that sense, it occupies a very small room in the larger microfinance building.

The Alliance relies on its highly interactive website where ideas can be floated, commitments can be formulated, instruments can be developed, information can be posted and retrieved, and where messages to the industry at large can be launched. Just how this materializes will depend on public participation.

The Alliance, therefore, is first and foremost a facility to bring together people and organizations that share the same ambition. What results from it in terms of products or services needs to be adequately positioned within appropriate institutions either new or existing. We will cross that bridge when we get to it.