Maybe if you knew how to tell what gender your money was, you'd be better able to help it to reproduce.
Here's an item on Fast Company's blog about Count Me In, an online women's microlending institution started by Nell Merlino, who also came up with Take Our Daughters to Work Day:
Impressively, CMI has a 90% repayment rate, despite the fact that almost 100% of the women the organization funds were previously denied loans by 3 to 5 banks. The secret? CMI has created a unique "women-friendly" credit scoring system that differs from the system used by most banks and other lending organizations.
Makes one think about how we design and use our all-important credit rating systems. How many investment opportunities are overlooked because they don't fit standard criteria for creditworthiness?
Of course, there could be other factors contributing to CMI's high repayment rate. For instance, maybe the women borrowers are winnowed by personal interviews, or made to self-select by jumping through numerous hoops before receiving funds. Either of which would affect the success rates as much as any credit rating system. My other question is, has CMI actually made enough loans that their rating system has actuarial significance?
Still, what all this suggests is that our choice of a single credit rating system for everything from car buying to lines of credit is arbitrary--we need different systems for different kinds of money. Someone who wouldn't be a good risk for a high-interest credit card might well be a great risk for a small business loan, for instance. Learning how to tell could create new investment opportunities.
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