Partners and Action: Financial Institutions and Health, HIV & AIDS Risk Management

This Guide, Partners and Action: Financial Institutions and Health and AIDS Risk Management, is the outcome of the Working Group on HIV & AIDS Risk management that the AfriCap Microfinance Fund (AfriCap) established. The guide is organized as follows:

• Chapter 1: Introduces Health and AIDS risks, the need for risk management, and the influence of different environmental factors on the risk exposure of MFIs;
• Chapter 2: Provides the overall framework of risk management, as well as underlying principles for health and AIDS risk management;
• Chapter 3: Describes in detail the different health and AIDS risks as well as their consequences, indicators and potential risk controls;
• Chapter 4:
  • Describes what each risk control entails, mentions important considerations that determine how to implement the risk control and elaborates on the why of each risk control;
  • Divides risk controls into the following broad categories: policy, strategy and institutional risk controls, employee focused risk controls, client focused risk controls.
• Chapter 5: Deals with partnership for risk controls, their definitions, selection, maintenance and monitoring.

The guide also contains a Tool that helps MFIs to deal with the risks and risk controls related to health and to HIV & AIDS in particular. The Tool:

• Is an electronic questionnaire that gives MFIs a high level assessment of their risk exposure, appropriate strategies and potential controls;
• Provides guidance on the need for health, HIV & AIDS risk management and an overall impression of priorities.