ABSTRACT
Indonesia has a complex and diversified landscape of microfinance institutions. Besides the internationally well-known state bank Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI, Indonesian People's Bank), with its system of unit desa or ‘village unitsȉ (see Henley, this volume, Chapter 11), there also exist some 9000 small, decentralized microfinance institutions commonly referred to as Bank Perkreditan Rakyat (BPR, People's Credit Banks). These BPR can be categorized into three groups that differ from each other in their history of establishment, ownership and governance, and size of operations. The different BPR thus provide an interesting field for comparing different decentralized microfinance models.
