Global Microfinance Case Competition (GMCC) 2019
In 2019, MMI hosted the annual Global Microfinance Case Competition (GMCC), a competition that sees the campus finalists from eight universities around Australia and New Zealand fly to Melbourne to compete at the International Finals. With over 600 individual registrations, the GMCC is consistently one of the largest student-run case competitions in Australia. Our client this year was Good Shepherd Microfinance (GSM), an institution that works to provide accessible finance to low-income Australians. The case was written in partnership with GSM, with a focus on their microenterprise program LaunchMe. Teams were tasked with identifying underperforming areas of the operation and offering recommendations to address these, in the form of expansion and reallocation of capital. Ethical considerations are at the core of the competition, hence case writers also consulted the University of Melbourne’s own Murrup Barak in order to appropriately incorporate the relevant cultural sensitivities for sections with a First Nations focus.
As a result, teams created highly thought out proposals that demonstrated a care and appreciation for the clients that this program would have an impact on, impressing an assortment of industry judges including Kearney, NAB, Deloitte and GSM itself. First prize was awarded to the University of Technology Sydney, who were rewarded with a cash prize of $1000 and fast tracked to the Kearney Summer Internship interview stage. The University of Melbourne were awarded second place in what was a tightly contested International Finals.
Angus Kennedy, GMCC Director 2020