Deutsche Bank and a major microfinance company are trying to rehabilitate the much-maligned collateralised debt obligation as a means of funnelling money from global capital markets into the pockets of the world’s poorest people.

Finca International, a US-based microfinance organisation, is set to announce on Thursday that it has sewn up a $21.2m CDO with the help of Deutsche Bank. Its affiliates in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Azerbaijan plan to leverage that money up another five times before lending it out in $500 chunks to tiny start-ups and would-be entrepreneurs.