Conducting Client Protection Assessments: A Guide
This guide is designed to provide guidance to an assessor on how to conduct a consumer protection assessment for an MFI and thoroughly evaluate the MFI’s implementation of the client protection principles. It can either be used by MFIs to assess their own performance or the assessment can be undertaken by an independent Smart-certified assessor. The guide leads the assessor through a step-by-step process of collecting the information and documents necessary to evaluate an MFI’s client protection practices as well as offering advice on how to evaluate this information against the set of indicators for each principle, which are also included. The guide assists in:
- Identifying the types of documents that will need to be reviewed and the types of people who will need to be interviewed;
- Helping MFIs analyze this documentation and evaluate their practices with respect to the Client Protection Principles;
- Giving recommendations on how to identify the institution’s areas of opportunity for enhancing client protection.
The companion "Resources" piece offers a selection of important recommendations, suggested questions, and resources for assessors.
