Relative poverty assessment of Nirdhan Utthan Bank Ltd. (NUBL) of Nepal was conducted to examine whether NUBL has reached to the poorest as envisioned in their mission statement. NUBL is the first non-government development bank licensed to provide micro financial services. During its initiation as an NGO in 1993, NUBL extended its first financial services to 521 clients from a single branch office. As of mid-December 2001, the number of clients has increased to 33,941 served from 23 different branch offices.
A sample survey of 200 clients and 300 non-clients households was carried out to examine the difference in the poverty status of clients of NUBL as against non-clients. Sampling of respondent household was carried out as instructed in the CGAP Operational Tool "Assessing the Relative Poverty of Micro-Finance" manual for relative poverty assessment.
